“The essence of language is meaning.

Vocabulary not grammar is the heart of language.”

The Natural Approach

Kim Fausto
Glorimar Piris
Wandallys Ramos
 Background
The Natural Approach was proposed in 1977 by Tracy Terrell, a
teacher of Spanish at the University of California, and Stephen
Krashen, an applied linguist at the University of Southern California.

Terrell and Krashen try to provide a detailed theoretical rationale for

the Natural Approach. In 1983, their joint effort came out in a book
The Natural Approach: Language Acquisition in the Classroom, which
states the principles and practices of the Natural Approach.

The term “natural” indicates that the principles underlying the

approach conform to the principles of naturalistic language learning in
young children.
Tenets
•Language acquisition is different from language learning and
language acquisition is the only way competence in a second
language occurs.

•Conscious learning operates only as a monitor or editor that

checks or repairs the output of what has been acquired.

•Grammatical structures are acquired in a predictable order and it

does little good to try to learn them in another order.

•People acquire language best from messages that are just

slightly beyond their current competence.

•The learner's emotional state can act as a filter that impedes or

blocks input necessary to acquisition.
 Objectives
The Natural Approach "is for beginners and is designed to help them
become intermediates."

•It has the expectation that students will be able to function adequately
in the target situation.

•They will understand the speaker of the target language (perhaps with
requests for clarification), and will be able to convey (in a non-insulting
manner) their requests and ideas.

•They should be able to make the meaning clear but not necessarily
be accurate in all details of grammar.
Theories of Learning
Krashen bases the Natural Approach on a number of theories of learning… 
 The Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis
Krashen makes a distinction between acquisition and learning.

Acquisition is developing competence by using language

for real communication. Speakers are not concerned
with language form, but with meaning.

Learning refers to formal knowledge of a language. It is

the process in which conscious rules about a language
are developed.
The Monitor Hypothesis
 The Natural Order Hypothesis

(1)People acquire the rules of language in a predictable

order.

(2)No matter which rules are taught first which are taught
later, the learners would always acquire the rules in a
certain order.
 The Input Hypothesis
(1)People acquire language by understanding messages or
receiving comprehensible input.

(2)People acquire language best by understanding input

that is slightly beyond their current level of competence.

(3)The ability to speak fluently cannot be taught directly;

rather, it "emerges" independently in time, after the
acquirer has built up linguistic competence by
understanding input.
 The Affective Filter Hypothesis

(1) Motivation. Learners with high motivation generally do

better.

(2) Self-confidence. Learners with self-confidence and a

good self-image tend to be more successful.

(3) Anxiety. Low personal anxiety and low classroom

anxiety are more conducive to second language
acquisition.
Stages
of
Language Acquisition
 Preproduction (Silent Period)
 Students at this stage exposed to English and are just beginning to
learn the language.

 The teacher does about 90% or more of the talking, and the ELL
students should listen and respond non-verbally.

 The teacher’s speech includes lots of pantomime, body language,

facial expressions, and gestures.

 The teacher models rather than just verbally explain tasks and skills,
and use lots of pictures and real objects.

 The teacher checks comprehension through asking them to respond

non-verbally.

 Students vocabulary includes approximately 500 receptive words

and begin to develop “Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills”
 Early Production
 Students begin to produce some language along with the same type
of non-verbal responses that they depended on in level 1.

 The types of questions that students can answer at this level are
yes/no, “what, who or where?” “either/or” questions.

 Teachers uses simplified language and avoids idioms and

uncommon vocabulary.

 Peer interaction is key to provide learners with better opportunities

to understand the content as well as develop their language.

 About 1,000 words form their receptive vocabulary, and as at any

other level, about 10% of their vocabulary is expressive.
 Speech Emergence
 Questions they are now able to answer include “how” and “why,”
which require fairly complex responses.

 Learners at this stage can participate in a variety of teaching

strategies.

 The teacher’s role is to provide nonverbal input, be mindful of their

own oral, written communication and unusual vocabulary, frequently
check for comprehension; and increase the number of non-verbal
cues.

 Whenever communication breaks down, the teacher employs the

same strategies as those used in the beginning stages.

 Students’ use phrases and sentences, and their receptive

vocabulary grows to nearly 7,000 words.
 Intermediate Fluency
 Learners have gone beyond speaking in phrases and simple
sentences to being able to engage in extended discourse.

 Learners can answer complex questions that require them to

synthesize and evaluate information.

 They can participate in essay writing, complex problem solving,

researching and supporting their positions, and critiquing and
analyzing literature.

 Learners demonstrate achievement of a learning objective through

creating diagrams, bulleted lists, and other less language dependent
means .

 Students at this level are still in the process of learning academic

English and still require language support.
Acquisition Activities
Activities for the Natural Approach are divided into four groups: affective-
humanistic, problem-solving, games, and content.
 Affective-humanistic

These types of activities attempt to involve students’

feelings, opinions, desires, reactions, ideas, and
experiences.
Open dialogues, interviews, reference ranking, personal
charts and tables, supplying personal information,
imagination, description, etc are often used to involve
students in communicating information about themselves.
 Problem-Solving

These activities are those in which the students’

attention is focused on finding a correct answer to
a question, a problem or a situation.
 Games
Playing games is an important experience in the acquisition process.
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, problem-solving, and
guess. And most games exhibit a combination of these elements.
 Content
These activities are the ones whose purposes is for the
students to learn something new other than language. They
include slide shows, panels, individual reports and
presentations, “show and tell ” activities, music, film scripts,
TV reports, news broadcasts, guest lectures, native speaker
visitors, reading and discussions about any sort of the target
language and culture.
Content activities provide comprehensible input in a
situation in which the students’ attention is on the message
and not on form. Many of these activities are done in
groups.
Roles
 Learner’s Role
1. Provide information about their specific goals so that
acquisition activities can focus on the topics and
situations most relevant to their needs.

2. Take an active role in ensuring comprehensible input.

3. Decide when to start producing speech and when to

upgrade it.

4. Decide, with the teacher, the relative amount of time to

be devoted to them and perhaps even complete and
correct them independently.
 Teacher’s Role
1. The teacher is the primary source of comprehensible
input in the target language.

2. The Natural Approach teacher creates a classroom

atmosphere that is interesting, friendly, and in which
there is a low affective filter for learning.

3. The teacher must choose and orchestrate a rich mix of

class­room activities, involving a variety of group sizes,
content, and contexts.

4. The Natural Approach teacher has a particular

responsibility to communicate clearly and compellingly to
students.
 Role of Instructional Materials
The primary role of materials in the Natural Approach is
to promote comprehension and communication. These
materials come from the world of realia rather than from
textbooks. Most materials will come in the form of:

•Pictures and other visual aids

•Reading components such as schedules, brochures,

advertisements, maps, and books at levels appropriate
to the students.

•Games
In conclusion…
 Advantages
• The classroom is a practical source of comprehensible input in the
target language for beginning students.

• The teacher creates a speech which will enable students to interact

using the target language.

• Students are not to respond in the target language immediately.

• Students interact in meaningful situations with other students at or near

their own level of competence.

• The teacher is aware of the specific vocabulary needs of the students

and can concentrate on appropriate and useful domains.
 Disadvantages
The Natural Approach belongs to a tradition of
language acquisition where the naturalistic features of L1
acquisition are utilized in L2 acquisition.

It is an approach that draws a variety of techniques

from other methods and approaches to reach this goal.

Does not require grammatical mastery of language.

References
 1999 SIL International The Natural Approach
http://www.sil.org/lingualinks/languagelearning/waystoapp
roachlanguagelearning/thenaturalapproach.htm

 Principles and Methodology

http://www.englishraven.com/method_natural.html

 http://blog.hjenglish.com/yococo/articles/473035.html

 http://www2.vobs.at/ludescher/Alternative
%20methods/natural_approach.htm