Natural Approach

The basic principles of the theory can be broken into four major stages of language acquisition.

1. Pre-production

The first stage in the Natural Approach is known as pre-production and is essentially a silent phase, where nothing seems to be happening.

Children have this stage when they’re not really talking at all. It seems nothing is going on. You’re essentially getting nada. No utterance, just a blank stare.

Actually, so many things are happening. They’re listening. Picking up on meanings. Reading context clues. Interpreting and making guesses on what is being said. Making mistakes and honing their guesses.

2. Early production

The next stage, early production, is when babies start uttering their first words, phrases and simple sentences.

The focus is still on comprehension. But this time, the crux of the issue is “Are you being understood by the other person?” (Again, you don’t need perfect grammar for this.)

Bothering with correct grammar comes late in the acquisition stage. In the Natural Approach, the early stages are replete with grammatically incorrect communication that aren’t really implicitly corrected.

When a child says, “I drinks,” mommy doesn’t give him a firm scolding. She finds it cute and then hands him a drink. But that child is slowly getting fluent with his first language. He’s communicating and using language to express what he wants, and all that’s happening without any direct grammar lessons.

3. Speech emergence

Over time, the child’s singular words and short phrases will transform into lengthier ones. Thus enters the speech emergence stage.

The sentences, while longer, are still relatively basic and are likely to contain a lot of mistakes in grammar, pronunciation or word usage. However, the progress is undeniable as more content is added to the speech.

Moreover, it would seem that the child is inclined to actually work through and craft sentences for the sake of communication. At this point, the child’s level of understanding others’ speech is quite high.

4. Intermediate fluency

Progress to fluency continues as more exposure to the language happens.

The (meaningful) linguistic experience stacks up so fast so that when that child sits waiting for his first grammar class, he’s already chatting non-stop with his seatmates, with perfectly decent grammar, even before the language teacher arrives.

This is the final stage, known as intermediate fluency.

And when the lessons do come, the child is just getting to peek behind the scenes to see the specific rules (grammar) guiding his own language usage.

All that’s explained to him is the rationale, the nuances of communication, behind the groupings of words he’s been using naturally all along. It’s all a review of what he already innately knows.

And that’s what Natural Approach is all about. It’s looking back to first language acquisition and using the whole bag of tricks there in order to get the same kind of success for second (and third, fourth, fifth, etc.) language acquisition.

Just because you’re learning another language doesn’t mean you have to reinvent the wheel. The expectations and the learning curve might be different for adults, but the underlying human, mental and psychological mechanisms are the same.

Input

Input refers to what’s being relayed to the language learner—the “packages” of language that are delivered to and received by the listener.

The Natural Approach puts high emphasis on not just the amount but also the nature of the input received.

Input is also known as “exposure.” For proper, meaningful language acquisition to occur, the input should also be meaningful and comprehensible.

Comprehension

In the Natural Approach, the initial focus really is on comprehension. The crux of the issue is, “Do you understand what is being said?”

You don’t need to notice subject-verb agreement for this.

Understanding the meaning of something can be done in a variety of ways besides technical grammar breakdowns. Comprehension must precede production for true internal learning to be done.

Communication

When it comes to language acquisition, the Natural Approach places more significance on communication than grammar.

In order for the child or learner to eventually produce their own sentences, it’s more crucial that he or she is constantly exposed to meaningful communication than grammar lessons.

The Natural Approach is a method of language teaching, but there’s also a theoretical model behind it that gives a bit more detail about what can happen during the process of internalizing a language.

This model consists of five major hypotheses.

For the most part, they repeat a lot of what was already previously described, but they provide a workable framework that can be picked apart for crafting learning strategies.

Acquisition Learning Hypothesis

There are two distinct ways to learn a language.

One way is via acquisition and is akin to how children acquire their very first language. The process is not conscious and happens without the learner knowing. The gears are already turning as the learner processes the second language and uses it almost strictly for communication.

The second way is learning, the conscious method that involves the learner actively studying and gaining formal instruction about the language and its rules. Learning focuses more on the technicalities of the language.

Between the two, acquisition is more significant in enabling language fluency.

Monitor Hypothesis

This hypothesis states that the language learner’s knowledge gained from conscious learning is largely used to monitor output rather than enabling true communication. In other words, the “learned” system functions as a language checker.

Meanwhile, the knowledge gained from acquisition does enable spontaneous speech and language production. The “acquired” system is what grants learners the ability to actually utilize the language.

Monitoring via the learned system requires the learner to essentially take a mental pause before saying anything. The phrase-to-be is scanned for any errors and may be corrected accordingly based on the learned rules and grammar.

Input Hypothesis

In order for proper language acquisition to occur (and be maintained), the learner must be exposed to input that’s slightly above their current level of understanding.

The basic formula for this kind of input is “i + 1” in which “i” represents the learner’s language competence.

Essentially, the language exposure must be a step ahead in difficulty in order for the learner to remain receptive and ready for improvement.

Natural Order Hypothesis

On the acquisition level, learning a language occurs in a natural and predictable order.

The grammatical rules of a language are internalized in a set, predetermined sequence, and this sequence isn’t affected by actual formal instruction.

The hypothesis also suggests that learners of the same language can expect the same natural order. For example, most learners who learn English would learn the progressive “—ing” and plural “—s” before the “—s” endings of third-person singular verbs.

Affective Filter Hypothesis

Language acquisition doesn’t occur in a vacuum. In fact, the learner’s emotions, or affect, and attitude can either improve or impede the process.

“Affective filters” can thus play a large role in the overall success of language learning.

Negative emotions can put a noticeable hamper on language acquisition. When a learner is feeling anxious, embarrassed or upset, his or her receptivity towards language input can be decreased. This makes it harder to learn or process language features that would otherwise be readily processed.

Conclusively, it’s important that a learner is relaxed and keen to improve. Having a comfortable language-learning environment can thus be a great aid.

How to Learn a Language with the Natural Approach 

1. Don’t Learn the Language, Acquire It.

The first thing to notice in The Natural Approach is that there’s an important difference between “learning the language” and “acquiring the language.” And like mentioned earlier, it all has to do with the activities involved in each.

“Learning” involves conscious instruction. When you memorize usage rules and vocabulary, when you memorize the different conjugations of the verb, when you’re concerned whether or not the tense used is correct—those are all “learning” related activities.

“Learning a language” means you’re studying a language, its linguistic forms (grammar, semantics, phonology) and how the different elements interact with each other. Most “learning” activities happen inside a classroom, but you could certainly manage to do these independently.

“Learning the language” will get you good grades, but it won’t necessarily lead to fluency.

“Acquiring,” on the other hand, involves different activities that are, for the most part, communicative and immersive in nature.

Meaning, these activities give you plenty of opportunities to listen, observe and experience how language is used. And, even better, these activities give you plenty of opportunities to use the language in order to communicate.

For example, you’re living with an Armenian family. You get to hear what the mom screams when she wakes the kids up in the morning, or what she says when she calls them to the table for dinner. You hear grandma talk to you in Armenian because she often forgets that you’re not one of her granddaughters.

Every day you find yourself exposed to the language. You’ll slowly pick up the language. You’ll be able to work out the context of things being said and work out their meanings. Maybe the dirty words first. Then you’ll pick up their expressions, then maybe the adjectives and verbs, and so on and so forth.