Stephen Krashen, a linguist and foremost authority on the concept of second language acquisition proposes the theory of “comprehensible input.” He maintains that students learn best “in low anxiety situations, containing messages that students really want to hear.”

Krashen’s theory mirrors my own study of the German language. While living in Germany I watched hours of TV shows, such as Star Trek and The Simpsons, which I genuinely enjoyed. This motivated me to do my listening work. Because I loved these shows and wanted to understand them, I was driven from within, to stretch my linguistic abilities to understand them.

Many linguists have cited personal motivation as one of the most powerful driving forces in the successful student. Using meaningful listening or reading materials would increase the student’s motivation to learn. Knowing this, why are language learners subjected to listening dialogues about shopping at the vegetable market or buying a new pen at the stationary store?

I have never been on the edge of my seat, waiting in anxious anticipation while listening to riveting stories on my Chinese learning CDs.

By creating interesting listening and reading materials, and by letting students chose their own subjects and materials, we can increase the success of learners. AUA, where I studied Thai in Bangkok, employed ALG, which stresses the importance of listening. To make the listening more meaningful, they offered students various subjects, at any given level. Some students chose to listen to lectures on religion, while others listened to history, news, or cooking.

Mowrer, a linguist who specializes in the study of first language acquisition, how children learn their first language, suggests that a child’s success when learning a first language comes from a real motivation to fit-in with his family and communicate with the world around him. An adult foreign language learner may have a very real motivation to acquire the language either to earn more money, to get a promotion, get a date, or in some cases, obtain a visa which would allow him to live or work in a foreign country.

Real motivation is stronger than synthetic motivation. The primary difference between L2 (foreign language) and L1 (native language) acquisition is that L1 acquisition usually occurs in the home and in real life situations, whereas L2 acquisition occurs in a classroom. In a classroom, nearly every situation is synthetic.

The second component of Krashen’s theory pertains to output. “These methods do not force early production in the second language, but allow students to produce when they are 'ready', recognizing that improvement comes from supplying communicative and comprehensible input, and not from forcing and correcting production."

Again, the idea of personal motivation and “real’ situations comes into play. When you are trying to communicate with your doctor, your boss, or your lover, who has just emptied your bank account and is heading to the door with your car keys, you are genuinely motivated to communicate, and will use all of your force of will to make yourself understood. When the teacher asks you comprehension questions about your banal reading assignment, however, you couldn’t be bothered.

Where first and second language acquisition theories align is with the concept of being ready. Children learning their first language experience a natural stage of development, called “the silent period.” Most children don’t speak until they are around two years old. The same should be true of language learners. Language learners should be given the freedom to listen and absorb the language, until they are ready to speak. And when they do speak, it should be from their internal motivation to communicate.

In nearly all language classrooms around the globe, unfortunately, the opposite is true. Students listen to or read unrealistic, disinteresting texts. They are expected to speak from the first lesson. And, their language production is motivated by a desire to comply with the teacher’s wishes or to follow classroom rules. They feel no more involved in the English they are speaking than they do in the math they are calculating.

I was getting my haircut in Tainan one day when an old woman came in with her four year-old granddaughter. The grandmother spoke Taiwanese to my hairdresser, but I understood enough to know that she was asking where I was from. She told the hairdresser proudly that her granddaughter was learning English in kindergarten. The small girl was holding a picture she had drawn of her family. I asked her in English, “Did you draw this?” She was shy about speaking to a big foreigner, but she nodded. “This is very pretty.” I said, admiring the picture. The smile on her face said that she understood me. “How many people do you see in the picture?” I asked. I could tell that she almost understood and wanted to answer, so I helped her out. Pointing at the people I began counting. She counted along with me, till we had established that she had five people in her family.

The grandmother jumped in at that point and said in Chinese, “She can count to a hundred. Do you want to hear?”

No, I didn’t want to hear her count to a hundred. I didn’t want the child to perform, I wanted her to communicate. She was talking to me out of her own personal motivation, and was talking about her family, something that interested her. But the grandmother destroyed the spell by pushing the girl back into the realm of synthetic language.

“Count for the nice uncle.” Said the grandmother, physically pushing the girl. “Show him you can count to a hundred.”

The girl’s countenance went from bright and happy to stoic and dutiful, as she counted to a hundred.

I complimented the grandmother, and she walked away feeling very pleased. The little girl didn’t seem as happy.

Afterwards, I explained to my haircutter that it was important to just let the kids learn naturally, rather than pushing them. She agreed with me. But then again, she was hoping I would give her a big tip at the end. I did.

For myself, as a learner, when my Chinese teacher asked me to be the grocer in a dialogue about buying vegetables, I refused. I am not a grocer. I will, God willing, never be a grocery, and I really don’t care about other people’s grocery-buying habits.

With German, Spanish and Italian I solved the problem of meaningful listening by watching my favorite movies or TV shows dubbed into the target language. For English language students, the choices of listening and reading materials available at various levels are incredibly extensive. Students could acquire an exceptional general education while progressively becoming fluent in English.

For westerners learning Chinese, however, there are a lot less materials on the market. For those of us learning in Taiwan, the choices are reduced even further because Taiwan writes in traditional Chinese characters, as opposed to the simplified characters used in China, which are more widely taught. Using real TV and movies becomes problematic because it takes so much longer to learn Chinese.

After ten months of study, I am comfortable reading lengthy texts in my book, although I find them boring and silly. I can talk about any subject with my Chinese friends, but I can understand less than 30% of a news broadcast. And to be fair, I mean I can understand 30% of the vocabulary, which often means understanding zero percent of the content.

My inability to use TV and movies as effective listening tools drives me back to my Chinese learning CDs, which talk a lot about buying vegetables.

When I was working in Cambodia, I attended Khmer school intensely for a period of three months. After that, I spent nearly a year out in the field, speaking Khmer everyday, doing interviews and research for my books and articles. For some time, I had been formulating my concept of “language immersion sandwich,” meaning a period of classroom learning, followed by a period of immersion, followed by a return to the classroom. So, after almost a year and a half in the country, I went back to Khmer school.

The first Khmer novel was not published till the 1950s. Before 1975 there was only one university in the country, and classes were taught in French. Khmer literacy levels were quite low. When Pol Pot came to power, he ordered the Khmer Rouge to burn what few books existed, and kill all of the intellectuals, teachers, professors and college graduates. Since the end of the Khmer Rouge regime, foreign governmental and non-governmental agencies have been struggling to help Cambodia raise literacy and educational levels.

Foreigners who want to learn Khmer are faced with a number of problems. The level of education of the Khmer teachers is generally quite low. Unlike the TESOL, for English teachers, or the diploma for teacher of Chinese to Foreigners, there is no certification program for Khmer teachers. When it comes to learning materials, there principally two Khmer textbooks available in the world, one of which was financed by the US State Department, during the Vietnam War. I have heard rumors that other textbooks exist at large universities, such as Harvard and The School of Oriental and African Languages in London, but those books are not available in Phnom Penh.

Both books are quite dated and lack sufficient practice to help a learner progress passed the intermediate level. The only books available for teaching Khmer reading and writing, are small, photocopied books produced in very limited quantities by various NGOs. As for listening, all movies and shows on state TV are dubbed by the same three people, two men and a woman. The dubbing was done pirate style, where the sound of an illegally obtained copy is turned off and the Khmer speakers read from a script. All of the sound effects and background sounds are lost. Plus, the scripts are translated by people with questionable English. The final scripts have to be approved and censored by the Ministry of Information, which is dominated by the Cambodian People’s Party.

In the end, watching movies or TV is such a tedious and un-enjoyable experience that everyone gives up. In returning to school, I was frustrated by the fact that we would simply be starting from chapter one of the CIA Khmer book, which I had completed a year earlier.

In order to make my learning experience more like real life, the teacher had me do adhoc dialogues and role-plays where I would pretend to call him to make a hotel reservation or to buy clothes. It didn’t take long for these exercises to become silly. I had already had the real life experience of reserving a hotel or buying clothes.

Once again, I wasn’t actually reserving a hotel room or buying clothes, and my teacher wasn’t really a hotel guy or a clothes salesman. So, the whole exercise seemed even more synthetic than it had the first time I went through school. After only a week of returning to school, I terminated my study of Khmer language. Beyond just being in the field and constantly talking to people, I couldn’t see any way to proceed.

Krashen, Mowrer, ALG, the Taiwanese girl who cuts my hair, and I all agree that learning will come best from personal motivation, combined with understandable input, of subjects and materials which the learner finds interesting.

Antonio Graceffo is a martial arts and adventure author living in Asia. His book, The Monk from Brooklyn, and all of his books are available at amazon.com. See his videos on youtube. http://ca.youtube.com/results?search_query=antonio+graceffo&search_type=&aq=f His website is speakingadventure.com Join him on facebook.com Contact Antonio: antonio@speakingadventure.com