REFLECTION V – NATURAL APPROACH Esra Günaydın 080564067

What I learned was that Natural Approach focuses on communicative abilities.However, it is not a
complete approach. It was developed by Krashen and Terrell. It has five hypothesis which are
Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis, Natural-order Hypothesis, Monitor Hypothesis, Input Hypothesis
and Affective-filter Hypothesis. In brief, according to Krashen, when students are stresful they have
difficulty in acquiring/learning language , that’s why, he developed Affective-filter hypothesis. When
affective-filter is low, students’ anxiety is also low. Also, when you teach language to your students,
what you teach should be higher than students’ capacity. To illuminate this, he developed Input
Hypothesis. He advocates that input must be a bit higher than students’ level.( I + 1 ). He also
developed Monitor Hypothesis. According to this hypothesis,in students’ brain, there is a third eye.
This third eye is like editor, it corrects students, edits what they have said. Krashens’ Natural-order
Hypothesis says that grammatical structures, rules are learned orderly. There is a predetermined
order.

What I had difficulty in understanding was that why learners learn with a predetermined order. Why
Krashen advocates that all grammatical rules have a sequence. What happens if we teach simple past
tense before simple present tense. This Natural-order hypothesis didn’t make me understand those
reasons.

I suppose I have to focus on more techniques that are used in Natural Approach.

I think I should use Krashen’s five hypothesis because I think stress is a hindering factor for students
for acquiring/learning language effectively. Also, I believe that the input we give our students should
be a bit challanging to get the outcome. It motivates students to learn better, because I believe that if
the input were the same with students’ levels, it wouldn’t take students’ attentions. I think, even
though Natural Approach is not a complete appoach, it is such an useful approach that I would use it
in my lessons.