Movies: The Natural Way To Learn a Language

Have you ever wondered how it is possible that you can speak your native language so easily? When you want to express something, correct phrases and sentences just come to you. Most of this process is unconscious.

Stephen Krashen, a professor at the University of Southern California and a linguistics expert, has developed a hypothesis to explain how this is possible. He used his Input Hypothesis to design what he calls a “natural approach” to learning a language.

Krashen uses “input” in this context to describe the words and sentences that you read and listen to. If you understand these sentences, they are stored in your brain. More specifically, they are stored in the part of your brain that is responsible for language.

Krashen uses his hypothesis to explain how a child learns his or her native language. The child listens to his or her parents and other people. As the child’s brain collects these words and sentences, he or she gets better and better at producing sentences on his or her own. By age 5, the child can already speak quite fluently.

According to Krashen’s theory, the way to learn and improve is to feed...