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 your brain with a lot of input - correct and understandable sentences, written or spoken.

Some cognitive scientists say that watching movies is one of the most natural methods of improving your language skills at any age. Learning English by watching movies is an example of "learning by input."

ReadEnt Reading Movies from SFK Media Specially For Kids Corp. apply this natural method of learning with an innovative tool called "Action Captions." As a child or adult watches the movie, each spoken word appears on the screen as text directly from the person's mouth as it is spoken.

"From the point of view of children and adults learning to read English fluently, especially if it's not their native language, these movies feed the brain with a lot of input," said Len Anthony Smith, chief executive officer of SFK Media. "They learn how to say these words and sentences naturally and, therefore, improve their pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary and comprehension quickly and easily."

ReadEnt's Reading Movies are available as interactive DVD programs for use on the TV, computer, video-game console or portable DVD player. They include such classics as "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," "Tales of Gulliver's Travels" and "The Trojan Horse." They also come with interactive quizzes and games to make the learning experience even more enjoyable for children from kindergarten through eighth grade.