Stephen Krashen

USC (emeritus) · Education

A popular assumption is that our ability to acquire accents disappears around puberty and that after puberty, we can only improve our accents with hard work and study. We hypothesize that our ability to acquire other accents is with us our entire lives, as evidenced by our ability to use other accents when imitating others. We are, however, relucta...

Speakers of heritage languages do not universally achieve advanced levels in the language. We present evidence that three barriers are responsible: (1) lack of access to comprehensible, interesting reading material in the heritage language. (2) The use of traditional language teaching methods in heritage language classes, and (3) the reactions of e...

Remember during a test when you were staring at the ceiling, and the teacher asked you if the answer was on the ceiling? Maybe it was.

My mind is so free and unburdened that I am fixing to clean up my desk." Flannery O'Conner. Quoted by Susan Ohanian, Books Day by Day, entry for April 16. I cleaned my desk recently (more precisely, I started to…) and I came across Susan Ohanian's article, "Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman was inspired by science fiction, not the Common C...

Drs. Noam Chomsky, Stephen Krashen, Nooshan Ashtari Keynote on Issues in Modern Linguistics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujnk0DTTsj0

Studies done over the last 50 years have confirmed that reading, especially free voluntary reading, is a powerful way of stimulating language and literacy development. Studies are also emerging that confirm that self-selected pleasure reading results in increased knowledge in many different areas, and that reading, especially fiction, can result in...

Studies done over the last 50 years have confirmed that reading, especially self-selected pleasure reading, is a powerful way of stimulating language and literacy development. Studies are also emerging that confirm that self-selected pleasure reading also results in increased knowledge in many different areas, and that reading, especially fiction,...

Language Magazine 22(2) 2022 Researchers in second language acquisition have hypothesized that there are two very different ways of gaining knowledge of language: acquisition and learning. Learning results in conscious knowledge of rules, and is the result of deliberate study. Acquisition results in a feel for correctness. It is the result of unde...

Fiction can take what seem to be ordinary situations and can show us how important they can be are. This one definitely changed my life for the better. The novel was a baseball story, one of several written by John R. Tunis based on a mythical Brooklyn Dodgers team. The episode I describe and discuss here is from The Keystone Kids (1943). Spike Rus...

A recent Penn State study reported that "parental help has no impact on student achievement." Guess what? Other studies have found that homework with or without parental help has no impact on student achievement. Other studies show similar results. Based on his review of the research, Kohn (2007) concluded that "… there is absolutely no evidence of...

Will extra time in school help children make up for instruction lost because of the pandemic? The research is not encouraging: Studies show that extending school time has no effect or a very small effect on learning (Patall, Cooper,and Allen, 2010; Kidron and Lindsay, 2014). Blad (2022) noted that one elementary school in Atlanta had positive effec...

This short paper is intended to describe our current progress, the conclusions reached over the last few decades. These conclusions are not “proven facts” but are hypotheses. As such, they can be disproven tomorrow. Thus far, however, these generalizations have survived quite well with a considerable amount of supporting evidence and no counterevid...

This volume focuses on the teaching of English as a foreign language to young learners at primary school. The volume features an introduction that covers essentials of teaching English to young learners from a theoretical, empirical, and neuroscientific perspective while also discussing the notion of a principled mindset, competence development, tr...

The lack of citations of previous research is the result of serious problems all readers of scholarly publications have: (1) articles are unnecessarily long (2) they are written in unnecessarily complex prose (3) journal subscriptions and books are very expensive. The solution: Short, clearly written scholarly papers, published in open‐access journ...

This is a report on the most recent of three similar studies. We present results on all three here in order to highlight the profound similarities. All three are analyses of the results of the PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study), an examination given to 10-year-olds in 2006, 2011, and 2016. LANGUAGE MAGAZINE, 20(10)

Studies have repeatedly confirmed that properly organized bilingual programs work very well; children in these programs score higher on measures of academic English than do similar children in all-day English programs (see meta-analysis by McField & McField, 2014). Strong bilingual programming will do even better if we take advantage of the power o...

Mason and Krashen (2020) introduced the world to Story-Listening and Mason (2019) did the same for Guided Self-Selected Reading. These two methods attempt to provide optimal input (Krashen and Mason, 2020) for language students. This study, the second in a series of studies conducted during a summer program in Surabaya, Indonesia with university En...

Secrets of Writing I begin this paper with a note of thanks to researchers in the area of writing. I have not contributed to much of the research I cite in this paper but I have benefited enormously from it. Over the last four decades I have been studying the research in "the composing process," experimental studies and case histories, along with e...

Free voluntary reading appears to be the most powerful means of developing advanced competence in literacy. This book covers progress made since the publication of the Power of Reading in 2004.

People spell very well. Spelling accuracy among college freshman, for example, ranges from 97.7% correct to 99.8%. It is unlikely that such high levels of accuracy come from formal instruction or writing. Most likely, spelling ability comes from reading.

1: Principles of language acquisition – theory and application. 2: Free voluntary reading: Still a very good idea. 3. Current issues and controversies: Does grammar teaching work? What about “comprehensible ouput”? 4. How reading and writing make you smarter, or, how smart peope read and write

For the last 40+ years, teachers have been advised to avoid following one specific methodology and use techniques and activities from different language teaching approaches and methodologies. This approach is called the “Eclectic Approach,” and almost all the modern course books support mixing methodologies. (British Council). (1) After 40+ years,...

The public, as well as many language professionals, think that immersion is the best way to acquire a language. People assume that the chance for acquirers to interact with native speakers is the major factor conferring immersion its value. The immersion assumption can be tested by comparing immersion and immersion-type experiences to other treatme...

The public, as well as many language professionals, think that immersion is the best way to acquire a language. People assume that the chance for acquirers to interact with native speakers is the major factor conferring immersion its value. The immersion assumption can be tested by comparing immersion and immersion-type experiences to other treatme...

What should we expect from heritage language (HL) acquirers? We propose that given access to "optimal input," we can eventually expect very high performance, native or near-native. But it won't happen right away. It takes time.

A popular assumption is that any kind of input we provide in class is acceptable as long as it provides some comprehensible input. This is not correct. Comprehensible is not enough. There are other factors that make up “optimal input.”

The Common Core emphasized nonfiction and the use of "informational" texts in order to prepare students for academics. But there is exciting news: there is evidence showing fiction might do a better job. And the best kind of fiction may be the fiction students select themselves, not "assigned reading." All this comes from recent research. VOCABULAR...

I comment here on Rosetta Stone, language teaching software. I conclude that Rosetta Stone presents a tepid version of comprehensible input, that the evidence so far provides only modest support for its effectiveness and that studies do not agree about users’ reactions.

Why Case Histories? Case histories are sometimes dismissed as "anecdotal" and sometimes they are. Many of us have had conversations with friends and relatives who tell us that they know someone who mastered another language and did it entirely from grammar study. Such local and personal cases often seem to be convincing. The problem, however, is th...

This study reports on an attempted replication of four previous Story-Listening studies. Conducted with EFL students from five Asian countries, findings confirmed that subconscious vocabulary acquisition can not only occur from Story-Listening using Comprehension-Aiding Supplementation, but also confirmed that gains are durable.

An acquirer of English as a foreign language had experiences in EFL classes that aimed to supply rich, interesting aural and written comprehensible input, traditional classes, and living in an English-speaking country. Her scores on the TOEIC examination support the hypothesis that the input-oriented classes were more effective and efficient, resul...

The Reading Hypothesis calls for students to do large amounts of interesting and comprehensible reading. When introduced in Japan, this presented a challenge to the established approach and resulted in a compromise, the eclectic approach, combining reading for meaning and Intensive Reading. Studies, however, consistently show that doing large amoun...

The hypothesis explored in this paper is whether a “virtuous circle” can be established to promote English language development: providing access to interesting and comprehensible reading material, which in turn will increase reading English books, which in turn will promote English competence and in turn more reading of English books. Specifically...

Positive and significant correlations ranging from .34 to .51 were found between self-reported pleasure reading (books, newspapers and magazines) and self-reported competence in speaking, listening, reading and writing English, among teachers in Korea whose responsibilities included teaching English as a foreign language.This result confirms the co...

In this paper, we will present two case histories of learners of English as a second/foreign language. We will focus on how their reading habits resulted in remarkable improvements in their linguistic competence. These case histories provide additional evidence in support of the Reading Hypothesis, which claims that high achievement is possible whe...

Nobody disagrees that reading is good for students' language development. The more they read texts that they can understand, the more confident and adept they become. However, it can be quite a struggle to get students started on their reading journey. We suggest that this is partly due to a lack of access to comprehensible and compelling reading m...

Case histories are real science, as long as we do enough of them and pay attention to crucial characteristics of our subjects' experiences. The case studies presented here provide confirmation of central hypotheses in language acquisition and have interesting practical implications.

Knell and West (2017) found an advantage for the early introduction of Chinese characters in beginning Mandarin. This advantage may be because the group experiencing early character instruction had more instructional hours dedicated to character instruction.

So far, research confirms that “e-reading” can be helpful for the acquisition of language and literacy. Because of the high cost of e-readers and e-books, however, those living in poverty are unable to take advantage of e-reading. A push toward increasing e-book offerings in libraries will have the effect of making the gap between the rich and poor...

Three meta-analyses of the effect of sustained silent reading are reviewed, all showing a consistently positive effect for self-selected reading in school, with most studies with EFL students. In addition, an important new study from Korea is analyzed: Despite less-than-optimal conditions, EFL students made impressive gains in vocabulary and readin...

It has been established that encouraging reading at all student levels supports literacy―not just literacy in terms of having basic reading and writing abilities, but in being able to perform advanced reading as well as having well-developed listening, speaking, and critical thinking skills. But what kind of reading has the most benefit for young l...

Lindseth (2016) reported that direct instruction and practice using the German verb-inversion rule resulted in higher accuracy in an oral test for college students, supporting the hypothesis that explicit linguistic knowledge can become implicit linguistic knowledge. It is quite likely, however, that the conditions for the use of conscious knowledg...

Six case histories of second language acquirers were examined to attempt to determine what factors play a role in developing a long-term pleasure reading habit in a second language (English). The cases provide support for several hypotheses: Long-term readers are first stimulated to read through a pleasant reading experience, they have access to bo...

An analysis done by Nation (2014) leads to the conclusion that readers in English as a foreign language can gain about one-half a point on the TOEIC test for every hour of independent English reading. A statistical analysis of progress made by seven adult acquirers of English living in Japan was performed to confirm this conclusion: All were interm...

There appears to be a dramatic decline in attitude toward reading between 2006 and 2011 for ten year-olds taking the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) examination. This ‘decline’, however, is probably not real but is the result of a change in the attitude questionnaire, mentioned only in the fine print in the 2011 PIRLS publi...

There is abundant research confirming that we pass through three stages on the path to full development of literacy, which includes the acquisition of academic language. The stages are: hearing stories, doing a great deal of self-selected reading, followed by reading for our own interest in our chosen specialization. At stages two and three, the re...

25 engineering students in India, who were highly motivated to improve their English, filled out a questionnaire about their reading habits in English and took a demanding vocabulary test based on words taken from preparation books for the Graduate Records Examination. The correlation between reading habits and vocabulary was substantial (r = .78).

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has repeatedly mentioned that immigrants to the United States should do what he did to acquire English: Avoid using their first languages and speak, listen to, and read a vast amount of materials in English—a combination he referred to as “immersion.” Yet, Schwarzenegger's real path to successful English acquisition w...

Krashen (1996) and Rossell and Baker (1996) have reviewed literature on attitudes toward bilingual education and have come to very different conclusions. This study reviews surveys included in Rossell and Baker as well as studies missed by both surveys and concludes that polls in which there is opposition to bilingual education typically present an...

794 elementary and secondary teachers filled out a questionnaire probing attitudes toward bilingual education. While support for the principles underlying bilingual education was strong, support for actual participation by students in bilingual programs was not as strong. Those with more supplementary training in ESL and bilingual education were mo...

I suggest that effective strategies are those that make input more comprehensible and that help us use writing to solve problems. It may be useful to teach some strategies directly, but some strategies may be innate, and others could develop as a result of comprehensible input. Those that can be taught help us recover from inefficient strategies we...

I continue here the long-standing discussion on the familiar topic of whether subconscious language acquisition is more powerful than conscious language learning, with a focus on vocabulary, adding recent studies as well as older ones I missed in previous publications on this topic (e.g. Krashen, 2004).

Direct/explicit instruction is hypothesized to result in conscious learning, not subconscious acquisition. If this hypothesis is correct, language acquisition theory predicts that the effect of explicit instruction will appear only when three conditions for the use of conscious learning (Monitor use) are met: When the second language performer (1)...

This report continues the work of Krashen and Brown (2007), developing and evaluating a set of hypotheses for the development of academic proficiency. That article defined academic proficiency as having two components: academic language proficiency and knowledge of academic content.

Both the popular media and professional literature are filled with suggestions on how to improve reading, but the one approach that always works is rarely mentioned: provide readers with a supply of interesting and comprehensible books. Instead, people are given advice that is dead wrong as a means of improving reading (e.g., roller skating and che...

Those who receive only intensive instruction in decoding do not do well on tests of reading comprehension, but those who learn to read by reading, by understanding what is on page, do well on tests of both decoding and reading comprehension.

Abstract  This paper discusses a phenomenon familiar to many language acquirers, an involuntary rehearsal of second language words, sounds, and phrases. Current second language acquisition theory as well as case history reports of the “din” are consistent with the hypothesis that the din in the head is a result of stimulation of the language acquis...

ABSTRACT  Studies of the impact of formal instruction consistently show that more instruction results in, at best, modest increases in consciously-learned competence, a conclusion that is consistent with the claims of the Monitor hypothesis.

The recent past in language teaching has been dominated by the Skill-Building Hypothesis, the view that we learn language by first learning about it, and then practicing the rules we learned in output. The present is marked by the emergence of the Comprehension Hypothesis, the view that we acquire language when we understand messages, and is also c...

Cobb (2007) argues that free reading cannot provide L2 readers with sufficient opportunities for acquiring vocabulary in order to reach an adequate level of reading comprehension of English texts. In this paper, we argue that (1) Cobb severely underestimates the amount of reading even a very modest reading habit would afford L2 readers, and therefo...

Three multivariate analyses, all controlling for the effects of poverty, confirm the importance of the library. Replicating McQuillan’s analysis of 1992 NAEP scores, access to books in school and public libraries was a significant predictor of 2007 fourth grade NAEP reading scores, as well as the difference between grade 4 and grade 8 2007 NAEP rea...

Perhaps the most important discovery researchers in second-language acquisition have made in recent years is something that most people knew already: acquiring a second language is not simply a matter of ‘knowing the rules’. Real second-language competence is subconscious knowledge, similar to knowledge of a first language. Competent second-languag...

This article reported the effect of summer reading programs in an ELL's reading development.

The Bilingual Syntax Measure (Burt, Dulay, and Hernandez 1973) was administered to 73 adult learners of English as a second language in order to investigate accuracy of usage for eight English functors. It was found that there is a highly consistent order of relative difficulty in the use of the functors across different language backgrounds, indic...

New evidence is presented that modifies Lenneberg's (1967) proposed critical period of language acquisition. The development of lateralization is complete much earlier than puberty and is thus not a barrier to accent free second language learning by adults. Rather, the development of lateralization may correspond to normal first language acquisitio...

This article focuses on a literacy approach called free voluntary reading. In schools, this approach is often called sustained silent reading, or SSR. The secret of its effectiveness is simple: children become better readers by reading, and it may be the only way to help children become better readers, writers, and spellers. Study after study has c...

A secondary analysis of previously published data shows that high-socioeconomic status (SES) English language learners (ELLs) outperform low-SES fluent English speakers on tests of math, and they do about as well on tests of reading. Thus, for ELLs, SES can offset the effects of language proficiency on standardized tests of math and reading. This r...