How to divide work and play? A clue form Linguistics—Krashen’s Hypothesis

How to divide work and play?  A clue form Linguistics—Krashen’s Hypothesis

USC Linguist Steven Krashen stumbled on to something one day when he was trying to teach a young Japanese immigrant english.  He was force feeding her, trying to teach her to speak through a step by step academic like method and it was not working.  He knew that he was doing something wrong and began to see the overall process as a dichotomy, the two phases separate and best if one happens before the other. It led to one of the seminal theories in Linguistics, Krashen’s  Acquisition/Learning Hypothesis. Krashen believes that to learn a language successfully (fluently, without accent) one must go through two phases:

Krashen’s Monitor Theory 

 (Acquisition vs. Learning)  

The learner must acquire the language before they try to learn it. Acquisition is a unconscious process, while learning a language is conscious, focused on rules

and correct form.

Sounds a lot like the perfect model of developing expert performance in soccer.  The soccer player must “acquire” through play soccer before they “learn” it through Deliberate Practice.  

1-Early “play” where learning is unconscious, invisible, autonomous—this is the Acquisition phase 

2-Later “work” that requires focus, effort and feedback—this is the deliberate Practice phase

While there has been a great deal of attention paid to the “work” side of things. there has been very little understanding of play in development.  We argue that the perfect developmental model will utilize both, at the correct times when the brain is most open. 

At the younger ages 5-13, the brain seems adverse to FOCUS and CONCENTRATION, and open to PLAY and EXPLORATION.  At these ages learning takes place best in play—unknowing, the opposite of focus, unconsciously, feeding supercharged learning right into the autonomous skill bank. 

Here in the US our youth soccer this acquisition period is not well understood and we tend to only focus on the learning. But, if it was handled correctly, would the acquisition phase contribute to the growth of a player?

Roberto Ayala is small. Maybe 5'9".  He is soft spoken and courteous. He takes in everything and pauses to speak, and in this case he was taking a very log pause.  We met at Soccer Ex in Rio. He was a dominant center back, having  captained Argentina more than Maradonna and leading them and his club team Valencia (Spain) through many great competitions.  He has always been one of my heroes for how he can bring the ball down ("Soccer Tennis")   We asked him, what was the most important time in your up bringing as a player? He said when he was 12 and he joined River Plate Academy. But wait, we asked, what about before that? What was happening when you were 7? 10? 11? “oh, I played everyday,” he said, “morning noon and night.” 

Do you think that had anything to do with your development? We asked.

"I never thought of it that way...that the free play i was doing when I was 8, 9 10, 11 was important to my development...I thought I was just better than everyone else. But it must be true, because I was playing more that the others. Still, after signing with River I still played with my friends whenever I could."

Another example from an area where we do produce expert performers (at least in Minnesota) is Hockey. In a recent interview, USA Hockey Captain and Minnesota Wild star, Zach Parise was

asked a very similar question as Roberto Ayala, “What was the most important time in your development as a hockey player?” they asked “It was when I was a sophomore at Shattuck St. Mary’s.” (a famous Minnesota Hockey school where among others Sidney Crosby also attended).

I would argue (and maybe Krashen would as well) that it was not.  Zach’s father was the former NHL player JP Parise, he grew up around hockey, JP Parise ran the program at Shattuck. His early environment was surrounded by hockey a love of that was around Zach since birth.  The most important time I would argue, was the wonderful environment set up by his father.

Interestingly, both Ayala and Parise had an amazing acquisition phase of development and neither gave it much thought.