Movie and TV watching has been a great help in ‘natural language learning’ for a number of Taiwanese people I have met. They had already had a fair amount of formal teaching beforehand though. I agree with what Ironlady said. Exposure alone is not enough. The material has to be roughly comprehensible. For small children learning their first languages, there are a lot of mediating factors that help in comprehension. People talk to them in simplified language and meaning is negotiated. Storybooks for small children have simple structures, a limited range of vocabulary and lots of repetition.
I wrote in this post
[forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopic.ph … 571#205571](Tips for learning Chinese (Part I)
that;
“While there are many questions which can be raised about Krashen’s theories, surely most teachers and language learners would agree that mere exposure to L2, with insufficient modulation of the material to enable comprehension, is at best an inefficient teaching method and at worst completely ineffective and disheartening.”