ALG: The Most Unique Language Learning Method

Automatic Language Growth is an effortless, comprehensible input-based approach to second language acquisition. Its goal is for adults to speak new languages as fluently and as accurately as native speakers. ALG is based in part on Krashen's Natural Approach and ideas about comprehensible input. Two main things that make ALG different from other comprehension-based methods are: 1) It has a much longer "silent period", where learners first just listen for many hours and gain understanding of the spoken language, before speaking it much or doing other things like reading, and 2) Its focus is on providing understandable experiences in the target language that create lifelong memories and are so compelling that learners forget that they are acquiring a new language, yet still learn it subconsciously. ALG was developed by the American linguist Dr. J. Marvin Brown and mainly implemented to teach Thai in the AUA Thai Program in Bangkok, Thailand from the mid-1980s until 2020.

This video features the story of Automatic Language Growth (ALG), an unusual comprehensible-input based language acquisition method based on the Natural Approach, "silent period", and Krashen's input hypothesis.

Can you pick up a new language as an adult and approach the fluency and ability of a native speaker? The story of an American linguist and the unusual language learning method he developed suggests that's not only possible, but it could be practically effortless and a lot of fun.

According to Dr. J. Marvin Brown, the secret is for adults to use the same kinds of opportunities and approach that come naturally to children: get many understandable experiences with a new language without trying to speak, study, or practice it. Let speaking emerge on its own as one gains understanding of the language through listening to all this comprehensible input.

The approach Dr. Brown developed, known as Automatic Language Growth, has been applied with success at the AUA Thai Program in Bangkok, Thailand for more than 30 years, yet remains virtually unknown.

Dr. Brown argued that contrary to popular belief, adults have not lost the ability to pick up languages like young children and become near-native or even native-like. Rather, with maturity they've gained abilities to try to speak, study, and practice language that interfere with the natural language acquisition process. Almost all language teaching today for adults requires that they use these conscious abilities instead of providing them with the kind of experience that children naturally get and pick up language from without study.

Meanwhile, despite control of variables being fundamental to the scientific method, there's still very little research that controls for the huge differences between typical adult and childhood language learning in order to see how much these differences, rather than age, are behind the adult difficulties with language learning we commonly observe.

However, these things are starting to change, and emerging research and opportunities might yield a future where adults can routinely pick up new languages and approach native-like levels of ability while having fun and learning many other things in the process.

Beyond Language Learning is discussing research on second language acquisition and possible ways to effortlessly learn languages to very high levels of ability at any age.

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Featured in video:

[BeyondLanguageLearning]

Thanks for checking out my video about ALG! I made it five years ago for my blog Beyond Language Learning. Its mission is to make language learning much easier and much more enjoyable for everyone. At the time, the video and blog didn't get much response, so I didn't make any more videos and eventually stopped blogging. It's great to see this video start to get so many views after so long. However, this has happened in the middle of a difficult few weeks for me. I want to respond to your comments, questions, etc. as much as I can, but that may take some time. In the meantime, I'd be grateful if you check out my related work that I've linked to below. —Kristian


Comprehensible English is my YouTube channel with many ALG-style comprehensible input videos for English beginners:


If you'd like to support my work further, you can through these links:

[قَسوَرَة-ق]

" We master a language not through study and practice, but by understanding the things that are in that language ”.
This, in my opinion, is the most beautiful thing ever said!

[Giraffinator]

I wish I could go back to eating, pooping, sleeping, and learning language all day without worrying about dumb silly adult stuff Those were the days....

[michaeljcarneyjr.]

As a student of Dr Brown in Bangkok from 1985 his method is the only way to learn a language for adults. Listen, understand and don't speak. Now as a 74 year old Thai Citizen my Thai is fluent, but I became fluent 5 years after studying with Dr Brown.

[SebastianBlix]

This is basically how I learned Japanese in my early 30s. I went to Japan alone, basically deaf, dumb, and mute, and just soaked for 3 months. Always listening, always watching, 24/7. Even while sleeping I had the TV or Radio on. I learned like a baby.

Upsides: 3 years later my speech sounds and feels native enough that people don’t know I’m not Japanese unless we’re speaking in person. I think in Japanese, and can use it without thinking about the mechanics of how it works, same as in English.

Downsides: since I never studied officially my writing is atrocious. I know waaay more vocabulary than I know how to even write. Reading is considerably better than writing, but nowhere near as good as speaking and listening comprehension.

[ProfesoraVerdura-chpc]

I am a retired Spanish and Linguistics Professor whose mentors in grad school were Tracy Terrell and Stephen Krashen, authors of The Natural Approach. Terrell and I and two other Spanish speakers went on to write and publish a Spanish text using Natural Approach. When we began giving workshops about this approach, we found many teachers were openly hostile . I began to do language teacher training in California and other states and used myself as a guinea pig, picking up Hebrew quite naturally. Your video is expertly done and spot on. I have shared it with my colleagues and will publicize it whenever I can. I found it on the YouTube channel Comprehensible Russian (I attempt to acquire a new language about every ten years). Thank you, thank you!

[TheSpecialJ]

I learned a crap ton of French by being a bad student. I was taking college French, but would skip my homework to instead watch French YouTube videos, starting with French In Action, but slowly worked my way towards more and more fluent French. No translation, no speaking, just absorption. Over time I began to understand a lot of French with such ease and even occasionally started to automatically formulate sentences without consciously thinking. Unfortunately the semester ended and I got busy with life and didn't keep up with it, but I know I can always continue what I was doing and get better at it again.

[ComprehensibleThai]

Thanks so much for this video! I decided to start my channel to teach Thai in Thai largely due to this video and the old Krashen Spock video. It might not be an exaggeration to say this video changed my life. Great work! It is greatly appreciated!

[AriaHarmony]

This is fascinating! This is how I learned English as a 2nd language. I tried textbooks first but it got really boring and confusing really quickly, so I decided to just read and listen to whatever content online that I liked, and translate when I can't understand from context alone. Over time I repeatedly found myself surprised at how much I can understand from context without translation. And then at some point without even realizing it I stopped translating in my head entirely, and I started picking up words and phrases at a rate I didn't think was possible, because I was very interested in the content that I was consuming. I also didn't speak much for years, since I had no one to speak to in English but myself, never thought that might have actually helped me pick up the language faster.

I think this "automatic" language learning that critical thinking can interfere with can be likened to muscle memory, sometimes if you try to consciously think about a skill or behavior that you have developed a muscle memory for, you can actually confuse yourself and momentarily forget how to do it. It's like you need to let the brain build and use whatever circuits it thinks best for the job. And I think it's in our best interest to let that part of our brains figure out stuff like language, after all if we had the chance to think critically with higher brain functions about how to walk for the first time we will all be still crawling around LOL


I use this for learning math and physics too, instead of trying to do it the textbook way of memorizing and going through things in specific order, I just launch myself into the topic and consume whatever content seems interesting enough. There's plenty content online on every topic, so it's just a matter of browsing around. Eventually I come back to things in a more systematic way but only when I get that feeling that the "automatic" phase is done and I have a vague initial foundation to build upon. And just like with English, I get the "learning things rapidly" phase eventually. And as the difficulty increases, I find that with this method I'm much less confused and more able to keep up. But I'm no genius, I just give my brain time at the start to get a look around and not rush it into understanding things prematurely.

[axrr]

As someone who moved very young to Canada from a Spanish-speaking country very young, I noticed this in my family. I came to Canada knowing basic English. Almost nothing. My parents had a bit more experience from university. And my little siblings knew none. Six months later, I was communicating very well with my peers at school. I remember how I'd quietly listen to the grammatical patterns that I heard in their speech, the way they pronounced the words, and everything they said while participating in class. There are words that when I say them, remind me of how I first learned them. During the same time, I remember how much my parents were struggling. Now, almost 7 years later, I speak the language fluently. I don't struggle to find words like I did in my early childhood. My dad, who works, has improved significantly but my stay-at-home mom struggled as much as she did when we first moved countries. That was until six months ago. She started interacting with people who spoke the language in an English course that had a similar teaching method to the one in the video. She is now on her way to dominate the language more. As for my little siblings, they are fluent, but since they are still young they commit grammar mistakes any child their age would, in both English and Spanish. Ever since I learned English, I have acquired a love for language learning. I'm hoping to become fluent in French in the next 4 years and I hope to become a polyglot someday.

[lauramolisho]

This is so true! After living in Thailand for 9 years, I never thought of enrolling into a Thai language school. I picked up all the Thai I know through simply listening...to my students while they interacted, to my fellow colleagues, to families I made friends with. When I speak the language to a local, they're always shocked at how "fluent" I sound, saying I sound like a Thai person

[ameliainazawa]

This makes so much sense. I've also come to the conclusion that school is doing it all wrong after realising I could speak english only thanks to internet, tv shows and video games. There's a lack of comprehensible content in other languages though but Dreaming Spanish is doing an awesome job.

[getampedmiku]

It makes senses that it is much easier to paint on a blank canvas than on one thats already filled

[AwesomePossum]

This is absolutely true, it’s how I learned English. I’m from the Netherlands, the country with the best non-native English speakers in the world. Movies and shows aren’t dubbed over, unlike most other countries. My English classes never helped me, constantly watching movies and shows and playing games did. I’ve always known this is the way to do it, immerse yourself in the language as much as possible. But that’s a hard with any language that is not English, unless you go live in that country.

[rileylavonne]

When I put down the dictionaries and textbooks and started hanging out, dating, and playing online games, my language skills got a whole lot better!

[krisimanasieva]

This is so true, when my family moved to America I couldn’t speak or understand anything. I was 7 and my brother was 6, my mom dropped us off at school and I remember that whole school year I didn’t say a word but I could understand everything at the end of the year. I just watched what everyone else was doing and somehow I managed to learn English that way. I’m so fluent now that I would consider myself to be at the level as a native speaker. As for my mom and dad, my mom already knew a bit of English before coming here but she is basically at the same level as me and my brother are. My dad on the other hand still is like a beginner, I think it’s because he keeps and keeps trying to speak and translate everything instead of listening.

[truthseeker]

My Father is 84 and is still learning new languages better than most teenagers can.

[XxyGoddam]

When I moved to France, my inlaws were a bit frustrated that I wasn't "learning" French and wasn't speaking to them in French even after a year being here. Instead, I was listening. And trying to understand, to make connections, to get the flow. I was speaking English with them(which was my third language and French was 4th), and they were displeased. And suddenly, after a year and a half I started talking in french. Fluently. With quite good grammar and pronunciation. Not like native, but better than many foreigners. And I knew it's gonna be like that, they just didn't believe it and thought I'm lazy. I just followed my guts. I read comics in French (visual context+fun), played videogames, watched youtube videos and listened to my inlaw family talk to each other. That's it. No grammar books, no boring lessons. I intuitively know how to speak, without knowing the rules by heart. I did the same with English before and I know that typical school program never worked as good as immersion and listening without being forced to speak. Good to see the proofs of that.

[Yuumiiiiiiiii]

As a person who learnt 99% of their English from Youtube I can totally agree. We currently are living in the best time to learn languages, because now we have short funny videos on tiktok, youtube, Instagram, everywhere you go you're able to find short content in the target language. People try to make it only as a bad thing, but gosh, this is the best way to learn the language! I now started learning Polish and Japanese watching short skits, and watching streamers play simple games I already know^^ Best way to chill and passively learn language as well!

[jotan]

Visual and audio comprehension immersion through different contexts, being around the language being learnt even if it's just listening really makes a difference for adult language learning. Without giving or teaching vocabulary lists, my students were eventually able to use new words in communication in English as their second language. Thank you for sharing this video!