Stephen Krashen
Formal learning involves the type of courses we take in school or on training programs. In school, it is mostly done to us (while we sit passively). It is explicit and presented in structured, generic packages, on a pre-ordained schedule, etc.
Informal learning, by contrast, constitutes everything beyond the formal - anything we learn through reading, listening, conversation, discovery, collaboration in work, etc. Notably it also includes first language acquisition. Informal learning generally involves a greater degree of volition, or at least participation, on the part of the learner.
The formal/informal learning distinction resonates, to my mind, with Stephen Krashen’s learning/acquisition distinction. I’d like to take a closer look. Bear with me, if you would. (Note that I’m not saying they’re the same thing, but I guess I’m trying to probe the similarities.)
Krashen claims that, in the language learning arena, there are 2 separate learning mechanisms. The first is explicit learning: grammar, rules, abstractions - the things we can know about about a language. This is what traditionally gets taught in classrooms and textbooks.
The second learning mechanism is implicit: the natural, psychological, sub-conscious, process of acquisition. Acquisition accounts for how we learned our first language, or when we learn a second language in the environment where it is spoken. Clearly, you can reach fluency without formal instruction.
From Wikipedia:
… language acquisition … occurs naturally, just like first language acquisition, under appropriate conditions. This view constituted a dramatic shift from an earlier position in Krashen’s published work reflecting a commitment to direct instruction and consistent error correction.
Simply by using the language (rather than describing it) we acquire it. Furthermore, Krashen believes there is no relation between formal language learning and acquisition. The domains are wholly separate. In fact, says Krashen, you could formally study the language forever and it would never impact your ability to produce fluent, natural speech.
Now if this is true, then it has major implications for the language teacher and perhaps for formal trainers of any stripe. To me, it is clear why. The lecture format relies almost entirely on the listener’s ability to absorb information along a single dimension, through a single modality. Break out of the lecture format and you get thinking, discussion, inference, interaction, etc, including in the classroom or online. You have feelings, judgments, a social and emotional dimension to the experience. These things involve the broader personality of the learner and mobilize a greater variety of his cognitive faculties. Greater cognitive depth means greater learning.
Notice too that Krashen’s theories pertain to the learner only. He has essentially nothing to say about the role of the teacher. (Some say, resentfully, that he is anti-pedagogy.) I’m seeing an analogy in the realms of e-learning. The more you read on that topic the more you realize that is the emphasis is shifting away from training (the stuff that’d done to us) towards learning (the stuff we do for ourselves).
Formal training programs may have as little effect upon work performance as lectures on grammar would have on individual spoken fluency. Thus far I haven’t read anyone in the e-learning literature make that kind of learning/acquisition distinction, but I think it’s one to explore.
Ken Carroll
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