You’ve done this before
Ages 0 to 5
No rules, no tests, no flashcards, and it worked.
2 min read
Friends, every season
Seoul, the 2000s
A generation of K-pop idols learned English from one sitcom, subtitles first, then none.
2 min read
Words before lessons
Flanders, 2020
Belgian ten-year-olds know hundreds of English words before their first lesson, from games and TV.
1 min read
The book flood
Fiji, 1980
Classes given storybooks learned English twice as fast as classes drilled in grammar.
1 min read
A novel at a time
Budapest, 1944
Kató Lomb began each of sixteen languages with a novel she couldn’t read yet.
2 min read
English at sea
At sea, 1878
Joseph Conrad learned English at sea in his twenties, then wrote Heart of Darkness in it.
1 min read
It’s not too late
The Netherlands, 1978
Adults learning Dutch outpaced young children all year, and teenagers were fastest.
2 min read
Ten meetings
Webb, 2007
Meet a word about ten times in context and it’s yours.
2 min read
Read while you listen
Webb & Chang, 2015
Hear a story while you read it and you learn more of its words, and keep them.
2 min read
49 studies agree
Jeon & Day, 2016
Read a lot in a language and you get better at it, every time it’s measured.
2 min read
Eight months old
Saffran, Aslin & Newport, 1996
Babies pick the words out of a made-up language after two minutes of hearing it.
1 min read
How diplomats learn
Foreign Service Institute
Full days in a class of a few: Spanish in 30 weeks, Japanese in 88.
2 min read
Grammar comes second
Tomasello, 2003
Children build grammar from the sentences they hear, not from rules.
2 min read