Second Language Acquisition and Second ... - Stephen Krashen

similar difficulty orders for grammatical morphemes produced by adult second language
performers in "widely different tasks", as described above, tasks whose commonality is that
they tap the acquired, rather than the learned system.
The theoretical model thus implies that the language teaching program will have two major
components, acquisition and learning, which occupy the "NP" and "VP" nodes in Fig. 1.
Acquisition
Fig. 1. A second language teaching program
The theoretical model clearly implies that the most important part of the entire program is
the intake node under the "acquisition" node, in Fig. 1. This follows from our conclusions
that language acquisition is more central than language learning in second language
performance. "Intake" is, simply, where language acquisition comes from, that subset of
linguistic input that helps the acquirer acquire language. It appears to be the case to me now
that the major function of the second language classroom is to provide intake for
acquisition. This being a very difficult task, one could also say that the major challenge
facing the field of applied linguistics is to create materials and contexts that provide intake.
In another paper (Krashen, 1978b), I attempted to define intake, and I will very briefly
review this definition and the evidence that led
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