Stephen Krashen

Stephen D. Krashen (born May 14, 1941) is an American linguist, educational researcher and activist, who is Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Southern California.

Stephen Krashen received a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1972.

Krashen has among papers (peer-reviewed and not) and books, more than 486 publications, contributing to the fields of second-language acquisition, bilingual education, and reading.

He introduced various hypotheses related to second-language acquisition, including the acquisition-learning hypothesis, the input hypothesis, the monitor hypothesis, the affective filter, and the natural order hypothesis.

Most recently, Krashen promotes the use of free voluntary reading during second-language acquisition, which he says "is the most powerful tool we have in language education, first and second."

As education policy in Krashen's home state of California became increasingly hostile to bilingualism, he responded with research critical of the new policies, public speaking engagements, and with letters written to newspaper editors.

He moved from the linguistics department to the faculty of the School of Education in 1994.

During the campaign to enact an anti-bilingual education law in California in 1998, known as Proposition 227, Krashen campaigned aggressively in public forums, media talk shows, and conducted numerous interviews with journalists writing on the subject.

After other anti-bilingual education campaigns and attempts to enact regressive language education policies surfaced around the country, by 2006 it was estimated that Krashen had submitted well over 1,000 letters to editors.

Krashen has been an advocate for a more activist role by researchers in combating what he considers the public's misconceptions about bilingual education.

Addressing the question of how to explain public opposition to bilingual education, Krashen queried, "Is it due to a stubborn disinformation campaign on the part of newspapers and other news media to deliberately destroy bilingual education? Or is it due to the failure of the profession to present its side of the story to reporters? There is a great deal of anecdotal evidence in support of the latter."

Continuing, Krashen wrote, "Without a serious, dedicated and organized campaign to explain and defend bilingual education at the national level, in a very short time we will have nothing left to defend."