through a process of ‘creative construction’, in ‘…a series of stages common to all
acquirers of a given language, resulting from the application of universal strategies’.
This natural order, however, according to Krashen (1985: 1), does not appear to be
determined solely by linguistic factors (such as formal simplicity) and it seems to be
independent of the order in which rules are taught in language classes where a
grammatical syllabus is being implemented. A number of other weaknesses of
grammatical syllabi such as the fact that they present each structure only once and that
they present language which some students might not understand (see the
‘comprehensible input’ hypothesis below) make Krashen (1987: 25) argue against the
teaching of grammar which he considers not only ineffective but also a frustrating
experience which encourages students to avoid using difficult structures for fear of
making mistakes. For similar reasons as the ones stressed above, Krashen (1987: 74)
considers error correction as a ‘serious mistake’ as, in his view, errors are inevitable
and, therefore, their only effect is that they raise the affective filter (see the ‘affective
filter’ hypothesis below) especially in beginning stages, and especially in spoken
language. Ellis (1997: 47-48) refers to such a view as the ‘zero position’ claiming that
it has been challenged on theoretical grounds by a number of researchers (e.g. Stevick
1980; Sharwood-Smith 1981) who have argued that formal grammar instruction can
convert, through practice, into implicit knowledge (an approach known as the
Interface Hypothesis), but also as a result of empirical studies (see Long 1983a and
1988; Larsen-Freeman and Long 1991 and Ellis 1985, 1990 and 1994) which
demonstrate that learners who receive instruction outperform those v