Teach English in North Wiltshire - TEFL Courses

Natural approach to teaching english as a foreign language (99) As the Natural Approach method is not commonly known and sometimes misinterpreted, I would like to start with an interesting comparison of swimming and language learning: human beings are probably the only species who are able to drown! Have you ever heard of an elephant drowning? You can hardly name an animal which cannot swim regardless of its weight and size. However, people do and it seems that our conscious swimming attempts deprive us of our natural swimming ability. Interestingly enough, new born babies learn to swim better than their elders. Another area where infants do outsmart us is a second language acquisition. All babies pick up their mother tongue easily without any explanation of grammar or vocabulary, while most adults cannot learn a new language without much effort and time. Even with their acquired knowledge and experience the former fall behind the babies' learning skills. And once again it seems to be due to conscious learning attempts. So the essential goal of Natural Approach is to make students rediscover their inborn abilities to acquire a language. And here we come to acquisition-learning distinction hypothesis according to which second language learners have two distinct ways of developing competence in a second language: learning and acquisition. Learning is the process of studying grammar consciously. This method is commonly practiced in most foreign language classrooms all over the world whereby grammar structures are examined and then made automatic by means of extensive practice. Here it is similar to acquiring other skills like driving or typing. Acquisition, on the other hand, is subconscious. It is very similar to the way we learn our native tongue. Unlike a learner, an acquirer cannot feel the processes, the changes happening in his brain and/or mind. When he acquires a new rule, he does not know what has happened because acquisition takes place below his level of awareness. The presence of conscious and subconscious knowledge in the minds of second language learners is accepted by the majority of people. What is controversial, however, is the claim that consciously learned rules cannot become subconsciously acquired through practice. This view belongs to Stephen Krashen and was reflected in his claim that "learning does not become acquisition". According to Krashen, learned competence (LC) and acquired competence (AC) represent two separate knowledge systems between which there is no interface. This view is known as NON-INTERFACE (NIP) position. On the other hand, the majority of foreign language teachers and methodologists believe that we first learn a grammar rule and through practice it becomes automatic thus subconsciously acquired. This second view, known as INTERFACE (IP) position, appeals to our intuitions whereas NIP is quite counter-intuitive. Now let us go back to Krashen's idea that conscious learning does not become acquisition. Then how do we acquire a foreign language? Krashen's input hypothesis gives the answer. According to this hypothesis, we acquire any human language in an "amazingly simple way": by understanding messages. Not through grammar practice nor through speaking and writing practice but by way of getting comprehensible input. A cornerstone of Krashen's theory is that human beings are equipped with a language-specific acquisition device (LAD), which is triggered by comprehensible input. When we understand a message, LAD automatically operates and picks up the new grammar in that input subconsciously. That is, while we are focusing consciously on the meaning of a message, a subconscious mechanism, LAD, focuses on the form or the grammar of the same message. I am a real patriot of Natural Approach. I really believe that it is very effective when acquiring second language skills (in our case it is the english language). Does it mean that I do not correct my students' mistakes at all? Well, this approach requires a lot of tolerance for grammar mistakes from the teacher. So I am patient when my students make very simple mistakes like the omission of third person singular "s". However, if a teacher does not correct such mistakes at initial stages of L2 learning, won't it be too difficult to eradicate them later on? To which I will answer that the error correction does not necessarily lead to the correction of errors. Error correction is a short-term solution. Incomprehensible output is long-term indeed. If a student keeps making the same mistake, it simply is a signal to me that he has not received an ample amount of messages. And I keep being patient with this student. I must say that I only correct those mistakes which hinder understanding the message, those preventing communication. To my mind, correcting both meaning and form-based mistakes can be harmful in the classroom in the sense that students might feel offended and hesitate to speak. Speaking a foreign language in front of the classmates is challenging enough for my students, and my ultimate goal is to lower their anxiety, motivate them, improve their self-esteem and see them improving their english language skills one small step at a time. It is the final product that is priceless. Bibliography Krashen, S. (1982). Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Pergamon http://naturalway.awardspace.com