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The Natural Ąpproach

The natural approacli is a metliod of second language teaching proposed by S. Krashen and T. Terrell. There are 2 distinct mental processes in second language development: acquisition process and learning process. The goal is to develop basie personal communication skills (everyday language situations).

Three stages:

1)    the pre-speaking stage - teacher only talks, gives commands, it resembles TPR

2)    the early speech production stage - marked with errors, teacher doesn’t correct them

3)    the speech emergence stage - promotes fluency through different activity games, role, plays, discussion; errors are not corrected

Its principles:

- emphasize natural communication rather than formal grammar study are tolerant of learners’ errors

emphasize the informal acquisition of language mles

Criticism: what about students whose speech never emerges? what a bont slow and fast movers?