Comprehensible input

The linguist Stephen Krashen makes a distinction between acquiring a language, and learning it. Learning is a more deliberate, explicit process that helps you monitor your speech and edit a text according to the rules of grammar. It helps you take tests. Acquisition, though, is the live online process needed to listen and speak. It helps you meaningfully converse face to face.

To acquire a language, the student needs comprehensible input. In other words, conversations in context. Counterintuitively, the more one learns about language, or deliberately thinks about it, the harder it becomes to acquire the language. Explicit learning does not transfer to implicit acquisition. In fact, it inhibits it.

Learning about this perspective has me thinking about writing fiction as a form of language acquisition. What does “comprehensible input” look like if you’re trying to learn to write fiction? It’s probably conversational, just like learning a second language. Basic face to face storytelling rather than writing in isolation. It’s embedded in a context, a purpose. How does my dad keep my uncle interested in a story they both lived through? He slants it a certain way. Makes himself the hero.