NATURAL APPROACH

By

 NATURAL APPROACH 

        The natural approach is a method of language teaching developed by Stephen Krashen and Tracy Terrell in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It aims to foster naturalistic language acquisition in a classroom setting, and to this end it emphasises communication, and places decreased importance on conscious grammar study and explicit correction of student errors. Efforts are also made to make the learning environment as stress-free as possible. In the natural approach, language output is not forced, but allowed to emerge spontaneously after students have attended to large amounts of comprehensible language input. The natural approach has become closely associated with Krashen’s monitor model, and it is often seen as an application of the theory to language teaching. Despite this perception, there are some differences, particularly Terrell’s view that some degree of conscious grammar study can be beneficial. The syllabus focuses on activities which Terrell sees as promoting subconscious language acquisition. He divides these activities into four main areas: content activities, such as learning a new subject in the target language; activities which focus on personalizing language, such as students sharing their favorite music; games; and problem-solving activities. The natural approach was originally created in 1977 by Terrell, a Spanish teacher in California, who wished to develop a style of teaching based on the findings of naturalistic studies of second-language acquisition. After the original formulation, Terrell worked with Krashen to further develop the theoretical aspects of the method. Terrell and Krashen published the results of their collaboration in the 1983 book The Natural Approach.

        The natural approach was strikingly different from the mainstream approach in the United States in the 1970s and early 1980s, the audio-lingual method. While the audio-lingual method prized drilling and error correction, these things disappeared almost entirely from the natural approach. Terrell and Krashen themselves characterized the natural approach as a traditional method and contrasted it with grammar-based approaches, which they characterized as new inventions that had misled teachers. The natural approach shares many features with the direct method (itself also known as the natural method), which was formulated around 1900 and was also a reaction to grammar-translation. Both the natural approach and the direct method are based on the idea of enabling naturalistic language acquisition in the language classroom; they differ in that the natural approach puts less emphasis on practice and more on exposure to language input and on reducing learners anxiety. The aim of the natural approach is to develop communicative skills, and it is primarily intended to be used with beginning learners. It is presented as a set of principles that can apply to a wide range of learners and teaching situations, and concrete objectives depend on the specific context in which it is used.

        Terrell outlines three basic principles of the approach: 

 Focus of instruction is on communication rather than its form. 

 Speech production comes slowly and is never forced. 

 Early speech goes through natural stages (yes or no response, one- word answers, lists of words, short phrases, complete sentences.)

 These principles result in classrooms where the teacher emphasizes interesting, comprehensible input and low-anxiety situations. Lessons in the natural approach focus on understanding messages in the foreign language, and place little or no importance on error correction, drilling or on conscious learning of grammar rules. They also emphasize learning of a wide vocabulary base over learning new grammatical structures. In addition, teachers using the natural approach aim to create situations in the classroom that are intrinsically motivating for students. Terrell sees learners going through three stages in their acquisition of speech: comprehension, early speech, and speech emergence. In the comprehension stage Terrell focuses on students vocabulary knowledge. His aim is to make the vocabulary stick in students long term memory, a process which he calls binding. Terrell sees some techniques as more binding than others; for example, the use of gestures or actions, such as in total physical response, is seen to be more binding than the use of translation. According to Terrell, students speech will only emerge after enough language has been bound through communicative input. When this occurs, the learners enter the early speech stage. In this stage, students answer simple questions, use single words and set phrases, and fill in simple charts in the foreign language. In the speech emergence stage, students take part in activities requiring more advanced language, such as role-plays and problem-solving activities.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

By
Image
                                            JOHN MILTON John Milton   (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet, pamphleteer,and historian,   polemicist,   man of letters, and a civil servant for the   Commonwealth of England   under   Oliver Cromwell. He wrote at a time of religious flux and political upheaval, and is best known for his   epic poem   Paradise Lost   (1667), written in   blank verse. He is considered the most significant English author after   William Shakespeare Milton's poetry and prose reflect deep personal convictions, a passion for freedom and self-determination, and the urgent issues and political turbulence of his day. Writing in English, Latin, Greek, and Italian, he achieved international renown within his lifetime, and his celebrated   Areopagitica   (1644)—written in condemnation of pre-publication censorship—is among history's most influential and impassioned defences of free speech and freedom of the press. Milton is best
Read more

KINDLY ADJUST TO OUR ENGLISH -Shashi Tharoor

By
KINDLY ADJUST TO OUR ENGLISH                                                                                     -Shashi Tharoor         He is the Indian national Congress MP Thiruvananthapuram. He is the Author of 23 books, Ex- minister of stat e, government of India and Former under Secretary General, United Nations. He outlines the key of elements of a possible peace in Ukraine and urges UN Secretary-General to give a call to the warning nation to stop the war. He plays his part in bringing the needless suffering and destruction to an end. His ideas on the way English is used in this country are helpful to the English learning persons.            Indian English is a result of the British colonization of India which lasted more than 200 years. Officially, Indians follow the rules of British English grammar but there are a lot of differences in the way Indians speak English. A little over 108 of Indians speak English. There is diversity among Indian English speakers due to cultu
Read more
By
Image
JOHN KEATS                                                                             John Keats was an English Romantic poet. He was one of the main figures of the second generation of romantic poets along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley , despite his work only having been in publication for four years before his death.            Although his poems were not generally well received by critics during his life, his reputation grew after his death, so that by the end of the 19th century he had become one of the most beloved of all English poets. He had a significant influence on a diverse range of later poets and writers. Jorge Luis Borges stated that his first encounter with Keats was the most significant literary experience of his life.           The poetry of Keats is characterized by sensual imagery, most notably in the series of odes. Today his poems and letters are some of the most popular and most analyzed in English literature. CHARACTERISTIC
Read more