Abstract
Two essentially different linguistic skills are involved in the mastery of a second foreign language. Stephen Krashen differentiates these two abilities through the labels acquisition and learning. Krashen (1982:10) maintains that “adults have two distinct and independent ways of developing competence in a second language.” The first way is through acquisition, which parallels first language acquisition in the child. Acquisition is a subconscious process, using language for communication. The second way is through learning. This is the conscious knowledge of language rules. In this paper I will explore the implications of this dichotomy, that is, the difference between communicative and cognitive language proficiency, for testing in the second language classroom.
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MacDonald, M.G. (1990). Communicative and Cognitive Language Proficiency: Implications for Testing in the L2 Classroom. In: Arena, L.A. (eds) Language Proficiency. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0870-4_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0870-4_15
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