Comprehension-driven language learning

One way to characterize approaches to language learning is by the focus of what the learner is doing. Comprehension-driven language learning focuses on learning to process messages in the target language. It initially emphasizes the receptive skills (listening comprehension and reading comprehension) rather than the productive skills (speaking and writing). The assumption is that speaking will eventually emerge on its own, and that pronunciation and real creative use of the language will be better if comprehension comes first and is emphasized more. Meaning is much more in focus than linguistic form.

Here are some of the principles on which comprehension-driven language learning is based:

• The more meaningful exposure, the more you learn.
• Language acquisition is a developmental process.
• You need lots of comprehensible input.
• Productive skills are harder than receptive skills.
• You can't rely on memorization alone.
• Memorized material can give a false impression of your proficiency.
• Your brain analyzes language whether you know it or not.
• People learning a language build up their own systems.
• Predictable scripts aid comprehension.

The writer and researcher who has been most influential in promoting comprehension-driven is Stephen Krashen.

Another writer who uses a lot of comprehension-driven language learning, whose works are included in the Language Learning bookshel, f is Greg Thomson.

• Fact module: Comprehension-driven language learning
• In modular book: Ways to Approach Language Learning, by Carol J. Orwig
• In bookshelf: Language Learning

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 3.5, published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 1999. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 21 March 1999

© 1999 SIL International