26 CHAPTER 2 Finally, in the natural order hypothesis, Krashen (1987) suggests that, although studies clearly show a natural and predictable order with regard to the acquisition of grammatical structures, a language syllabus should never be sequenced in line with this natural order. Although Krashen’s hypotheses have received much criticism (for an excellent overview, see Zafar, 2009), they are particularly valuable because they have shed a di erent light on the process of learning a foreign language. Based on the then prevalent Chomskyan view of language and innateness, Krashen’s hypotheses added to the growing importance of exposure to the L2 and of the implicitness of (subconscious) language acquisition. A decade later, Lewis introduced the lexical approach (Lewis, 1993), in which grammatical rules were viewed as lexical patterns. In support of the lexical approach, Schmitt and Schmitt (2000) developed a cognition-based learning theory based on the niteness of human short-term memory, which drives our brain to prefer storing lexical chunks (prefabricated sequences, xed expressions, grammatical patterns, etc.) instead of individual words. Under this premise and based on these developments, the role of grammar teaching was signi cantly reduced, but the movement was also met with considerable reservations in foreign language teaching, perhaps because the newly proposed methods were not seen as consistent with the still dominant and widely accepted Chomskyan linguistic theory. FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING AS INFORMED BY SLA RESEARCH VanPatten and Williams (2015, p. 9-11) summarize what we know about SLA as a result of a vast research tradition. Table 2 lists their 10 most robustly attested observations with regard to SLA, based on well-established empirical ndings, which are very much in line with a strong version of CLT. TABLE 2. Ten observations for effective L2 learning 1. Exposure to input is a prerequisite for SLA. 2. A considerable amount of SLA happens incidentally. 3. Learners come to know more than what they have been exposed to in the input. 4. Learners’ output (speech) often follows predicable paths with predictable stages in the acquisition of a given structure. 5. SLA is variable in its outcome. 6. SLA is variable across linguistic subsystems. 7. There are limits as to the effects of frequency of exposure on SLA. 8. A learner’s first language does not exert great influence on the SLA trajectory. 9. There are limits as to the effects of instruction on SLA. 10. There are limits as to the effects of output (learner production) on language acquisition. Based on VanPatten and Williams (2015, p. 9-11)
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