Walk into your house, and you’ll find everything you need: forks in the drawer, shoes by the door, keys on the hook. You know where everything is, and you don’t have to think about how to use it. You reach for what you need, when you need it, and (as long as you don’t have pets or children), it’s just there.
That’s language acquisition.
Acquired language is found in your main living space. It’s in the cupboards, on the counter, by the sink. It’s part of your everyday experience, stored where you can access it quickly, without thinking. It’s functional, it’s automatic, and it fits naturally into the flow of your life.
But you might have some other stuff that isn’t part of your everyday life. You know… all the things you have in… the basement? A storage unit? Your parents’ garage? …The Attic?
Whatever that space is for you, picture it now. That space where you store all the non-essentials. I’m going to call it The Attic, but it can be whatever matches your life. The Attic is full of things you know you have, but you don’t use them very often. You know where the holiday decorations are. You know where the baby clothes are stored. You remember putting your old yearbooks up there and you’re pretty sure they haven’t been moved. But you don’t reach for those things in the middle of your daily routine. You don’t decorate for the holidays every day while making breakfast. Baby clothes don’t magically grow into teenage sizes and fill your closet. Most importantly… you can function without them! The things in the Attic aren’t integrated into everyday life, and they don’t become part of it over time. They stay what they are: special-occasion, out-of-sight, and, usually, out of mind.
That’s what it’s like to use the language you learn explicitly: grammar rules, conjugation charts, even drilled vocabulary. You can study them. You can memorize them. You can learn them. But when you do, they don’t end up on your countertop. They go in your Attic. If you’re able-bodied and have time, you can go up to the attic and pull them down for a quiz or worksheet or maybe even when editing a paper or thinking carefully about what to say in conversation. But it takes time and effort to go grab them, and that stuff always go back to the attic. Knowledge about language lives in your declarative memory, where facts are stored, but it isn’t actually part of your linguistic system.
Acquired language, on the other hand, is stored in procedural memory. It’s used without effort. It’s what we build when we communicate with our students using language they understand in context, over and over, across time. That comprehended, communicatively-embedded input gradually becomes part of their linguistic system, which is like furnishing a house. It’s always there, always accessible, and can be used without any special effort.
When students make “errors”, even on things you’ve taught them and you’re sure they’ve learned, it’s because that language isn’t downstairs. If it’s in the house at all, it’s up in the attic. And that attic knowledge doesn’t reorganize itself into kitchen-drawer knowledge. You can’t turn holiday lights into lamps by reviewing them often enough. It’s a different kind of knowledge entirely. You don’t need your Attic stuff to live your daily life, and you don’t need declarative knowledge about language to use language.
Our goal isn’t to cram more into the Attic. Attic stuff is great to have on hand, but it’s not really that useful. The goal should be to fill the living space with the kind of stuff students can use to communicate all day, every day, without special effort–the same way they do in their first language. After all, what good is your old yearbook if you don’t have silverware?”
Furnish the house, don’t fill The Attic.
