Natural Approach

The Natural Approach is an approach which emphasizes natural communication rather than formal grammar study and is tolerant of learners’ errors. It pays particular attention to the informal acquisition of language rules. The core of the Natural Approach is language acquisition, in which the comprehensible input is the key notion for language teaching and learning.

The theory underlying this Natural Approach is Stephen Krashen’s (1982, 1997) monitor theory about second language acquisition, which has been widely discussed and hotly debated over the years. The major methodological offshoot of Krashen’s views was manifested in the Natural Approach, developed by one of Krashen’s colleagues, Tracy Terrell (Krashen & Terrell, 1983). Acting on many of the claims that Asher made for a comprehension-based approach such as TPR, Krashen and Terrell felt that learners would benefit from delaying production until speech “emerges”. In fact, the Natural Approach advocated the use of TPR activities at the beginning level of language learning when “comprehensible input” is essential for triggering the acquisition of language.

The Natural Approach was aimed at the goal of basic personal communication skills, that is, everyday language situations—conversations, shopping, listening to the radio, and the like. The initial task of the teacher was to provide comprehensible input, that is, spoken language that is understandable to the learner or just a little beyond the learner’s level.

In the Natural Approach, learners presumably move through what Krashen and Terrell defined as three stages: (1) The preproduction stage is the development of listening comprehension skills. (2) The early production stage is usually marked with errors as the student struggles with the language. The teacher focuses on meaning, not on form, and therefore the teacher does not make a point of correcting errors during this stage (unless they are gross errors that block or hinder meaning entirely). (3) The last stage is one of extending production into longer stretches of discourse involving more complex games, role-plays, open-ended dialogues, discussions, andextended small-group work. Since the objective in this stage is to promote fluency, teachers are asked to be very sparse in their correction of errors.

The most controversial aspects of the Natural Approach were its advocacy of a “silent period” (delay of oral production) and its heavy emphasis on comprehensible input. The delay of oral production until speech “emerges” has shortcomings. What about the student whose speech never emerges? And with all students at different timetables for this so-called emergence, how does the teacher manage a classroom efficiently? Furthermore, the concept of comprehensible input is difficult to pin down.

It has been realized that there never was and probably never will be a method for all, and the focus in recent years has been on the development of classroom tasks and activities which are consonant with what we know about second language acquisition, and which are also in keeping with the dynamics of the classroom itself. Teacher should be the primary source of comprehensible input in the target language; a person who creates a classroom atmosphere that is interesting, friendly, and in which there is a low affective filter for learning; a person who chooses and arranges a rich mix of classroom activities, involving a variety of group sizes, content, and contexts.

Procedure

•　Start with TPR commands.

•　Use TPR to teach names of the body parts and to introduce numbers and sequence. “Lay your right hand on your head”.

•　Introduce classroom terms and put into commands. “Pick up a pencil and put it under the book”.

•　Use names of physical characteristics and clothing to identify members of the class by name. The instructor uses context and the items themselves to make the meanings of the key words clear: hair, long, short, etc.

•　Use visuals, typically magazine pictures, to introduce new vocabularies and to continue with activities requiring only student names as response.

•　Combine use of pictures with TPR.

•　Combine observations about the pictures with commands and conditionals. (if there is a woman in your picture, stand up.)

•　Using several pictures, ask students to point to the pictures being described.

Techniques

Affective-humanistic activities attempt to involve students’ feelings, opinions, desires, reactions, ideas, and experiences. Open dialogues, interviews, reference ranking, personal charts and tables, supplying personal information, etc. are often used to involve students in communicating information about themselves.

Problem-solving activities are those in which the students’ attention is focused on finding a correct answer to a question, a problem or a situation. In many cases, the students work on a problem in small groups using the target language to discuss and solve the problem or finding the desired information. In other cases, the class and teaching discuss the problem together and solve it together.

Games can take many forms and there are many different sorts of elements which make up a game activity. In a Natural Approach classroom, the primary focus of any particular game is on words, discussion, action, contest, etc.

Content activities are those whose purpose is for the students to learn something new other than language. Examples of content activities include slide show, panels, individual reports and presentations, music, films, TV reports, news broadcasts, etc. Content activities provide comprehensible input in a situation in which the students’attention is on the message and not on form.