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an event that may also be related to formal operations (Krashen, 1981). As argued elsewhere, this hypothesis has several advantages. First, it claims that child-adult differences in attainment are not due to any change in the "language acquisition device" (LAD) but are due to the filter, a factor that is, in a sense, external to the LAD. Second, it is consistent with the claim that adults are still "acquirers", that they retain the natural language acquisition capacity children have. It also allows for the possibility that some adults can achieve extremely high levels of competence in a second language and may even be taken for native; it predicts that such "Good Language Learners" will be, above all, good acquirers, with the ability to obtain a great deal of comprehensible input with a low affective filter. In many cases, the filter prevents the adult only from going the last few inches.17
A similar argument can be made concerning Schumann's Acculturation Hypothesis. Schumann (1978b) has hypothesized that acculturation is the "major casual variable in second language acquisition" (p. 29). Schumann maintains that "Second language acquisition is just one aspect of acculturation, and the degree to which the learner acculturates to the target language group will control the degree to which he acquires the target language" (p. 34).
While the Acculturation Hypothesis seems to account for second language acquisition data in extended sojourn situations, it is easily expressible in terms of comprehensible input and low filter level. Acculturation can be viewed as a means of gaining comprehensible input and lowering the filter. Moreover, the comprehensible input hypothesis accounts for second language acquisition in situations that acculturation does not attempt to deal with.
Schumann defines two types of acculturation:
"In type one acculturation, the learner is socially integrated with the TL group and, as a result, develops sufficient contact with TL speakers to enable him to acquire the TL. In addition, he is psychologically open to the TL such that input to which he is exposed becomes intake. Type two acculturation has all the characteristics of type one, but in this case the learner regards the TL speakers as a reference
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