the classroom should be viewed as a place where the student can get the input he or she needs for acquisition. The classroom may be superior to the outside world for beginning and low intermediate students, in that the real world is often quite unwilling to provide such students with comprehensible input, as Wagner-Gough and Hatch have pointed out.

This section also discusses the possible role of conscious learning, pointing out that "easy" rules can be taught for optimal Monitor use, but that "hard" rules may only serve a "language appreciation" function for most students.

An earlier version of this chapter was published in the SPEAQ Journal (Krashen, 1978d) and in Felix (1980).

The Relevance of Simple Codes

The final chapter, Chapter 9, is the most recently written, and appeared in Scarcella and Krashen (1980). It focuses on the question of simplified input, both inside the classroom (i.e. teacher-talk) and outside the classroom (i.e. foreigner talk), asking whether such simplified input is of use to second language acquisition. The conclusion is that such input is not only highly useful, but it is possibly essential. Simple codes may provide for the second language acquirer what "caretaker speech" provides for the first language acquirer, comprehensible input with a low "affective filter".

Simple codes, input that the acquirer understands, are not deliberately grammatically sequenced or controlled. Rather, the speaker is only concerned with whether the listener understands the message. It is quite possible, it is argued, that the natural "net" of grammatical structures that such simple codes provide is an excellent natural syllabus, presenting a sufficient quantity of those structures that acquirer is "ready" to acquire, and allowing for built-in review.

The implications are as follows: the best language lessons may be those in which real communication takes place, in which an acquirer understands what the speaker is trying to say. Similarly, a reading passage is appropriate for a student if he or she understands the message. Finally, the teacher-talk that surrounds the exercises may be

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