Interview with Dr. Krashen - Why Pleasure Reading is Key in Learning a Second Language

 In today's episode we  have an amazing guest! Stephen Krashen is Professor Emeritus, University of Southern California. He is active in language acquisition, bilingual education, literacy and heritage language development.  He has published over 560 professional papers and books. He no longer writes books because they are so expensive that nobody can afford them. Many of his books and papers are available for free download at www. sdkrashen.com and he announces new publications on twitter (skrashen). He hopes someday to have more twitter followers than Justin Bieber.

Bilingual Parenting Moments:

Jon and Daniela:
Mateo is playin with sounds and he "reads" books in English and Spanish.
Elias is learning lots of new words and repeating everything.

Dr. Krashen:
When I was in the 3rd grade, I was in the low reading group...My dad brought home comics and the rest is history!   

Krashen had lunch with Stan Lee!

Why is pleasure reading so important for second language acquisition?

"We learn language in one way... when we understand messages"

Local supermarket - befriended Fidel and has been having short conversations with him every week.

Reading graded readers in Spanish - Favorite authors:

Bill VanPatten
Adriana Ramirez

How to find books that are interesting and comprehensible?

 - Magic word - Stories
- 90% of kids say they like it when mom/dad read to them or tell them stories.
- Comic books
- Library traffic doubled by adding comic books.
- Language experience

What if my child doesn't like to read?

- Comic books
- Books available around the house
- Library
- Keith Curry Lance - Is literacy a problem we should throw money at? 

What's the value of reading?