Second Language Acquisition and the Power of Pleasure Reading with Dr. Stephen Krashen

We acquire language in only one way, not by producing it, not by study, and not by getting corrected, but by understanding what we hear and read. An efficient and also very pleasant way of doing this is listening to and reading stories, also known as fiction, also known as literature. Reading fiction is not only a path to language and literacy: Fiction readers know more about a variety of areas, including history, science and practical matters. To take advantage of the power of fiction, readers need easy access to books. The best way to make sure everyone has access to books is to support libraries and librarians.
www.sunywcc.edu/TESOL

[@NellieDeutsch]

What an amazing presentation!!! Probably the best I have heard in a very long time. Thank you, Stephen. You have revived my faith in the value of storytelling.

[@mikenow3050]

On a side note. My daughter lives in beautiful North Wales with her fiance. He speaks fluent welsh. Which is a wonderful but impenetrable to my English ear. I had him try to teach me some. When i had questions on grammar, He Did Not Have A Clue. He just instinctively knows the right way to say it. I am not bothering to learn spanish grammar, i'll just wing it.

[@misssmithersmith]

As an avid reader and English teacher, this lecture was fascinating! What is most amazing to me is that this is certainly not happening in the high school classroom. Thank you for these ideas, and I hope to integrate them into my practice.

[@stevanvasiljevic9451]

Hello, Sarah. So, as English teacher you can confirm that the theory of language acquisition is the right one? I'm on intermediate level and I've been reading for months in order to improve my English.

[@mikenow3050]

I am a layman. Just an ordinary run of the mill English man. I have just turned 50. For some reason i have recently and quietly become facinated by languages. And came across Stephen's seminal presentation on language and how we acquire it. It blew me away. He should be required reading for all teachers not just language teachers. And definitely all language students. Oh and i am now trying to reading Spanish short stories. I enjoy watching Steve Kaufman too.

[@luizvagnersampaio6684]

Great comment..Friends!!

[@oksanatymoshenko2374]

This is awesome! I am Ukrainian. I picked up English from American missionaries when I was a teenager- learnd to read in English and books were available from kids stories to American history textbooks 🎉 I have the explanation now😅

[@Frank79811]

The best teaching on language learning. Thank you for sharing !

[@honroub]

Thank you, Dr.Krashen! Amazing! I've been struggling with ESL teaching, as well as ELE teaching for many years. I like your common sense approach to explaining things - you made me smile a lot, laugh a few times (frequent words - how do we make sure students learn them? - well, they are frequent, so ... ;)) and my intuition tells me, as I'm listening, that this is the way to go. This has been the way I've acquired English, as well as Spanish - in those moments of immersion in a text, a recording, a movie, ... Reading interesting stories and providing other amusing input. An eye-opener in terms of "forced speaking" which, in our school, is still sadly in vogue. Glad to have heard this! :)

[@yacinechina4770]

This is a true professor, thank you Stephen

[@namehimhuman5500]

very illuminating, thank you very much! opened my eyes on many things

[@SnakeAndTurtleQigong]

Thanks so much

[@Anna-pf6pi]

Thanks! Brilliant lecture❤❤❤

[@wavynomad]

Wasn’t expecting a recital of MIMS 1:01:41

[@mackenziefox8248]

we can start reading a language once we have approached the target language and its basics, so how are we supposed to acquire those basic and fundamental tools in a new language? could we learn it the traditional way? thanks

[@pauld3327]

Totally agree with you. You need to know a few hundred words to start reading level 1 graded readers. To get there, I heard good things about Assimil. An app like Duolinguo could also help you to learn them. Both Assimil and Duolinguo use your first language to learn words in your target language which I think is a good way to start learning a language.

[@jennifermarea8011]

What I did with German is that I started watching KZbin vlogs and Netflix shows in German. I spent 40+ hours a week for like 2 months listening to German. I never studied any vocabulary or grammar. Everywhere I went I had AirPods in listening to stuff I’d watched before. After that spent like a day learning the alphabet and how the letters sound. Then I started reading. And when I started reading I started with graphic novels and comics, then I moved on to novels. Hopefully this helps.

[@michaelyuan3382]

I am all in favor of massive reading of comprehensible input. But I am not so convinced about not doing any corrections at all. How do students learn then that it is not "I comes to school" if they are never corrected on it? What are teachers then supposed to do? Ignore the mistakes and just shovel them more correct but comprehensible input examples to drown out the mistakes by sheer quantity? Secondly, shouldn't this approach be somewhat age-specific? Would you refrain equally from correcting a 3-year-old and a 13-year-old or a 30-year-old? Does this approach also work for pronunciation? Silent reading is not going to improve pronunciation, I would think. How would you improve extremely heavily accented English then that is practically incomprehensible if not through corrections? Many of my students and colleagues at a junior high school in Taiwan, for example, speak a kind of mutated English that is ironically kind of mutually intelligible among themselves, but they cannot communicate with native speakers without causing considerable pain to the audience because their pronunciations are so bizarre that they are really speaking a different language from English. In such situations, would no corrections whatsoever still help? How? What is the point of having teachers then if not to offer corrections when needed?

[@HernanReyesEnglish]

Gossiping is better en Español. Haha

[@TheHaining]

I can't trust someone who's repeated himself throughout his life - people's ideas evolve, Krashen's ideas fossilised as soon as he found a way of making money out of what he said. He's been telling exactly the same anecdotes for the last 50 years. Sad.

[@Stunnafafadef_Utwerk_Iwatch]

🥰😍😘😍😇🙂🙃