Acquisition curves for conversational, printed, and informal input.
It is practically impossible for someone to acquire a second or foreign language merely by listening or watching to the radio or the TV, unless the acquirer speaks a very closely related language, because the input would be only “noise”.
Ways can Promote Comprehension
Linguistic Ways
- Slower rate and clearer articulation. (It helps identify word boundaries and allows more processing time)
- More use of high frequency vocabulary, less slang, fewer idioms.
- Syntactic simplification, shorter sentences. Consciously referring to these “rules” might be helpful on occasion, but we make these adjustments automatically when we focus on trying to make ourselves understood.
Non-linguistic Ways
- providing extra-linguistic support (e.g. physical props, and pictures) for beginning classes is a very important for encouraging language acquisition.
Quantity Requirements for Higher Levels of Proficiency
FSI estimate of the amount of class time necessary to achieve an FSI 2+ (about B2) rating: 720h for European languages and 1950h for Exotic languages (Arabic, Korean, Chinese).
| Level | Hours (Accumulated) | Sample Texts |
|---|---|---|
| 2K | 22 | Graded readers |
| 3K | 33 (55) | Graded readers |
| 4K | 56 (111) | Boxcar Children, Sweet Valley Kids |
| 5K | 112 (223) | Goosebumps, Agatha Christie novels |
| 6K | 167 (390) | Sweet Valley High, Twilight, John Grisham novels |
| 7K | 222 (612) | Tom Swift, The Master Spy (Gask) |
| 8K | 278 (890) | Zane Grey novels, Hunger Games |
| 9K | 333 (1223) |
Level: K = 1000 word families Cumulative hours of reading required for each 1000 word level. (Nation, 2014)
Texts that can be read at 98% coverage at a given 1,000 word family level are used to help readers acquire words in the next 1,000 word level.