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Quote by Stephen D. Krashen

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The Natural Approach: Language Acquisition in the Classroom

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Author

Stephen D. Krashen
Stephen D. Krashen

Stephen D. Krashen is a renowned linguist born in 1941. His research in second language acquisition has had a profound impact on the field of language learning theory. more

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“The study of universal grammar is a joint venture between globetrotting theoreticians who worry about impossible grammars and laboratory experimentalists who put young children through these impossible grammars. Perhaps, as in physics, one of these days there will be a grand unified theory of universal grammar. Linguistics today is where physics was in the age of Galileo and Kepler. The collection of principles may one day be replaced by one powerful principle - perhaps just the principle of recursion. that underlies them all. Universal grammar is still waiting for its Newton and Einstein. Whatever it turns out to be, its job its to keep children on the right track to their language.”

Language AcquisitionUniversal Grammar
Book:The Infinite Gift: How Children Learn and Unlearn the Languages of the World
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“When someone recommends a book to you, you know two things; that it is a good book and you have a good friend. If you listen to everybody, you will be nobody. Judge a man by what he tried, not by what he accomplished. People hate what they know but fear what they don't. A curious mind is never bored. Parents, teachers, and politicians should not be judged by their popularity. People believe in everything except the reality.”

KoreanForeign LanguageLanguage LearningLanguage AcquisitionKorean Writers
Author:Min Kim
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“Now we have come full circle to the subtitle of this book: children learn by unlearning other languages. Viewed in the Darwinian light, all humanly possible grammars compete to match the language spoken in the child's environment. And fitness, because we have competition, can be measured by the compatibility of a grammar with what a child hears in a particular linguistic environment. This theory of language takes both nature and nurture into account: nature proposes, and nurture disposes.”

LanguageLanguage Acquisition
Book:The Infinite Gift: How Children Learn and Unlearn the Languages of the World
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“Universal grammar is about what language is: it is to be distinguished from prescriptive grammars, often distilled in newspaper columns, which tell us what language should be. We are all entitled to our own opinions of what is appropriate, be it in the arrangement of words or flowers - as long as we keep in mind that these are just opinions. The properties of universal grammar linguists have unearthed, however, are a useful defense when language "authorities" try to rationalize their pontifications: none of the don'ts they advertise can be found in the book of universal grammar.”

LanguageLanguage AcquisitionUniversal Grammar
Book:The Infinite Gift: How Children Learn and Unlearn the Languages of the World
Create image