Today, I want to go over the monitor hypothesis. As I said before, Krashen found from his research that acquiring a language and learning a language are different. Acquisition is unconscious; learning is conscious. Similarly, the acquisition system is what creates output (spoken or written), and the monitor system is what checks or "monitors" the speech for correctness. Therefore, the monitor, or grammar checking, can only be used once there has been sufficient input that the student can produce some output.
In order to use the monitor, three conditions must be met:
In the real world, these conditions rarely occur. Most people can't name or explain grammar rules, and even linguists don't know them all. It's hard to focus on one rule, because we naturally use multiple tenses, aspects of grammar, etc. when talking. And when you're talking, you don't really have time to stop and think. Language that you have acquired will just come out spontaneously without much thought.
These conditions pretty much only happen on tests in language classrooms that are on one particular rule. And, unfortunately, after the test, the rule is forgotten, This is because teaching grammar rules is usually out of context and not meaningful. We teach the rule, drill the rule, test the rule, and then most students forget it. The better way to teach grammar points is to give sufficient input that uses the rule correctly. For example, my students really struggle with prepositions--when to use on, in, at, to, etc. I could try to teach them the rules, but really, does it make any sense that we say "on the bus" but "in the car"? And when they're talking or writing, will they stop everything to think about if at or in is used with small places? The better way is to give them lots of input (listening and reading) that uses the prepositions correctly. They'll pick it up in time (and at different times...that's the natural order hypothesis, coming next week!).
So now that we know about the monitor, how can use this hypotheses to inform our work in the classroom?