Gass, Chapter 5,Question 5, Hypothesis 1 p.

136, Do you agree that, because

there may be a difference between learning in a classroom and acquisition
outside a classroom, learners learn in two distinct ways? A student once
said: If this is true and you have learned French in a classroom and go to
France, then it wont help you. Is this a logical conclusion- that is, one that
can be drawn from the distinction between acquisition and learning? Why or
why not?

I do agree that there is a huge difference between learning in a

classroom and acquisition outside the classroom. In fact, I am a product of
both types of learning styles. I learned French in a classroom and I acquired
Spanish by spending a lot of time with my ex-husband and his Colombian
family.

As I was reading Chapter 4 on page 129, I realized that what I had

done with Spanish is acquire it. In Gass Second Language Acquisition book,
it says:
acquisition is a subconscious process. Language acquirers are not
usually aware of the fact that they are acquiring the language, but are
only aware of the fact that they are using the language for
communication. The result of language acquisition, acquired
competence, is also subconscious. We are generally not consciously
aware of the rules of the languages we have acquired. Instead we
have a feel for correctness. Grammatical sentences sound right; or
feel right, and errors feel wrong even if we do not consciously know
what rule we have violated. In nontechnical terms, acquisition is
picking up a language.

Gass definition of acquisition completely describes how I learned

Spanish. However, along the way of my acquisition, I did not learn any of
the grammar rules. I had to do that once I got to the MATL program. In a
sense, I had to catch up because I had to know the grammar in order to

teach Spanish. Therefore, while I was fluent in Spanish, I had no idea what a
stem-changing verb was, the why behind using the subjunctive or exactly
when to use it. I knew how to use it, but if someone had asked me the rule
behind it or many of the grammatical terms, I would not have been able to
tell him or her at the time. There was much about Spanish grammar that I
did not learn along the way of my acquisition of it.
For this reason, I feel it is important to learn a language in the
classroom as well. What we are exposed to in the classroom gives us a solid
foundation of the language and if we get the chance to be immersed in that
language after having studied it for awhile, we can rely on that foundation to
survive. According to Gass book, learning refers to conscious knowledge of
a second language, knowing of rules, being aware of them, and being able to
talk about them. Thus, I do not agree with the quote of the student that is
written above stating that learning French in a classroom will not help you if
you go to France. Learning French in a classroom may not make you fluent,
but if you happen to go to France (or any other French-speaking country) one
day, (and you paid attention in French class), what you studied in class will
give you something to fall back on.
I was that student who went to France after several years of classroom
exposure, and when I got there, I was completely lost. I could not
understand a word and I barely spoke for about the first two months. It was
intimidating. But over those first two months, I just took everything in,
observing and notating everything that was going on around me in French.

Once those two months passed, I could not be quiet. I practiced my French
everyday. I talked to anyone that would talk to me in French and I learned a
lot. I believe had I not had all those years of study before I went to France, it
would have been much harder to adjust and learn the language as much as I
did. I had the foundation of French in my brain; I just had to accustom my
ear to how fast the natives spoke.

References
Gass, S. (2013). Second Language Acquisition. New York, NY: Routledge.