Second Language Acquisition and Second ... - Stephen Krashen

"affective filter" may exist, a filter that "delimits" input before it can be processed by the
"cognitive organizer". In our terms, some potential intake may not make it to the "language
acquisition device": acquirers' motivations and attitudes, if they are less than optimal, may filter
out certain aspects of the input, so that they are no longer available to the acquirer as intake,
even if the requirements for intake outlined above are met. Thus, motivational and attitudinal
considerations are prior to linguistic considerations. If the affective filter is "up", no matter how
beautifully the input is sequenced, no matter how meaningful and communicative the exercise is
intended to be, little or no acquisition will take place. Again, I refer the reader to Chapter 2 of
this volume for detailed discussion of those aspects of attitude that have been found to be related
to language acquisition.
Figure 2 illustrates the relationship between attitude and motivation
Fig. 2. The relationship between affective factors and language acquisition
and language acquisition. It clearly implies that attitude and motivation are of central
importance, a fact that most language teachers seem to be aware of already.
The second node under the "acquisition" node of the tree is labeled "fluency". While intake
builds acquisition, some fluency work may be necessary to enable the performer to perform this
competence in a workable way. To what extent this is to be done depends, of course, on the
situation. In foreign language acquisition (e.g. French in the United States), it probably does not
pay to emphasize this aspect of the program, as students will not need to perform in French in
their everyday life. In second language programs (e.g. ESL) there is a real need for early and
functional second language production, and the program needs to deal with this need.
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