Development: Lessons from Stephen Krashen and the Natural Acquisition Theory

Commentary commentary 

An exercise I found today amongst some papers:

EXERCISE

meaningful input |  low anxiety situations |  natural communication |  communicative |

comprehensible input |  forcing and correcting production |  grammatical rules |  tedious drills

Language acquisition does not require extensive use of conscious _________ ____, and does not require ______ _______.

Acquisition requires ________ _________ in the target language, ______ ____________ in which speakers are concerned not with the form of their utterances but with the messages they are conveying and understanding. 

The best methods are therefore those that supply 'comprehensible input' in ___ ______ ______, containing messages that students really want to hear. These methods do not force early production in the second language, but allow Students to produce when they are 'ready', recognising that improvement comes from supplying ____________ and _______ _______, and not from _______________________. 

ANSWER KEY

Language acquisition does not require extensive use of conscious grammar rules, and does not require tedious drills.

Acquisition requires meaningful interaction in the target language, natural communication in which speakers are concerned not with the form of their utterances but with the messages they are conveying and understanding. 

The best methods are therefore those that supply 'comprehensible input' in low anxiety situations, containing messages that students really want to hear. These methods do not force early production in the second language, but allow Students to produce when they are 'ready', recognising that improvement comes from supplying communicative and comprehensive input, and not from forcing and correcting production. 

Stephen Krashen (influential linguist, b 1941) 

 

What about the studial learner with respect to the experiential and quick progression through the course — do schools' approaches to language acquisition appeal to our 'learn through experience' tendency as learners and bias away from our tendency to study a language?

Four proposed learner types in ELT

Both 'these methods do not force early production' and ‘when they are ready' resonate with me after having worked with this approach for several years at language centres around Buenos Aires (for Wall Street Institute, now Wall Street English).

Some history: the 'natural approach' is summarised by the above exercise by Stephen Krashen, linguistics professor emeritus at the University of Southern California. Krashen is the creator of important language acquisition hypotheses on which schools have based teaching methods, to which I can give testimony here. 

Audio-lingual methods fell from
popularity in the 1950s

The natural method aims to teach a second language in large part through an immersion in it – it brings the immersion approach to the classroom setting. It builds its arguments from natural acquisition we experienced post birth, it is based on the same principles. Conditions are set up that will imitate a mother-tongue acquisition setting with all materials in, and all staff speaking, the target language (TL). Learners are made aware that they can only speak the TL when inside the school. 

The natural method came to fruition early 20th century as an answer to a growing dissatisfaction with older grammar-translation methods. 

Such a method had been proposed in the 18th and 19th centuries, proposing languages should be taught in the language being learned. It then found reinforcement in the 1970s in a language teaching revolution of sorts, since which time a variety of new communicative-based methods have emerged, one of which was what I worked with at Wall Street Institute.

In my EFL lessons (lessons in non-English speaking countries) it is only in exceptional cases I use the learners' first language (L1). I develop other clarifying techniques, e.g., gesture, mime, use of sound, drawings, synonyms, opposites, collocation, clines, examples, explanation, dictionaries, picture-matching cards, partial modelling, realia (real objects). The learner can benefit from learning these skills, likewise. There are psycholinguistic and biopsychological findings that support increased retention in relation to taking the longer more difficult path to signalling meaning, i.e., by adopting these skills over translation methods (giving away the answer in Spanish). The language faculties are given their full workout ergo greater likelihood of retention.

All of which corresponds with the communicative-based approach of immersive schools, which are based on Krashen’s hypotheses for language acquisition. 

At Wall Street Institute centres, staff are encouraged to use target language (TL) with learners. This means the structures, vocabulary, functional language, pragmatics, phrases and expressions of English surround learners and sets up those 'natural' conditions already mentioned. Exposure is also had on-line at home through interactive multimedia, in ‘Speaking Centres’, through native speaker teachers and of course other learners (particularly in ‘Social Classes’).

Despite this, for most learners, exposure is mainly had via computers. Additionally, many learners’ attendance rate to the centres is not ideal, which means eliciting language from the learner, or sometimes groups of learners, is the lion’s share of the teacher's work in the ‘Encounter’ (the Encounter is the monthly level-checking meeting of 55 minutes, pass or fail). At any rate, I enjoy developing CELTA techniques with respect to eliciting whilst maximising STT (student talk time) and minimising TTT (teacher talk time).

A Multimedia Lab or Speaking Centre

In an ideal Encounter the learner can produce most of the required language naturally, little aware they have done so. In such an Encounter, there is time left over for clarifying doubts and heightening language awareness, for chatting and improving general fluency (also an Encounter criterion).

It is great to witness a click for some learners; where for others it was gradual. There are moments in which oral fluency opens up for learners and the language to which they have been being exposed for long durations is there and available for them to use. At times they have had to fail and repeat their course unit; this repetition and that which is inherent to the course itself help this click occur. Sometimes in magic moments of this type, passive understandings of things become active and able to be discussed.

It is at these times I enjoy seeing the methodology in action, its promise delivered.

My Encounters always include praise and tailored feedback; the fewer the learners in an Encounter there are, the more tailored the feedback can be in the allotted 5 minutes.

Returning to the aforementioned studial versus experiential tendency we have to varying degrees,    it is the learners of both low exposure and low tendency to study who generally progress through  slowly. 

While understanding the real-world constraints that exist here in Buenos Aires, I wish learners would attend more of the immersive activities, those on which the method hinges, because the reality inside the classroom, as I sense it, is that the method leaves behind learners who are not able to attend the classes that simulate the immersive condition and then do not have enough studial materials either available to compensate.

Under controlled, less controlled, and then freer conditions, learners are exposed to each language point to acquire. This is a very careful joinery to acquisition, relative to the retention available through studial methods. Learners can organise speaking practice with the centres' personal tutors (Argentinian nationals), or by taking 'Complementary Classes' or 'Social Classes' (with L1 speakers) or simply by speaking to staff and peers around the centre; Complementary are focussed on practice of language, i.e. useful functional language, vocabulary, and grammar, in varied contexts, and for Social Classes learners can put their their skills to use, i.e. speaking, listening, reading and writing.

The Encounter, therefore, involved clarifying and reteaching of the language points. 

Checking in with leaners regarding their course objectives, a mere improvement in general fluency (listening or oral) by interacting with English-speaking expats is not everyone's aim.  

I know that without the exposure to L2 here in Argentina I wouldn't have developed some invaluable aspects of fluency; equally, pen-and-paper self-study of Spanish grammar, was also, I know now, invaluable. 

Ultimately, I think studying language as an adult is important and not just strictly absorbing it experientially. I think natural production of the language is facilitated with immersion. However, this strict picking-up of the language, implicit in the approach, seemed to also leave deficits and delays in production. It seems that applying the critical period of acquisition we have had in younger years to adulthood has its flaws despite Krashen's hypotheses. 

Find here a teacher-learner guide I put together whilst working at the school 'Understanding the Learner, which I've referred back to many a time.

From 2022 ‘Adults are better language learners than children’ (in studial settings)

In Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching (2nd. Ed.). Richards J. & Rodgers T. (2003). Cambridge University Press.

"The Direct Method was quite successful in private language schools, such as those of the Berlitz chain, where paying clients had high motivation and the use of native-speaking teachers was the norm. But despite pressure from proponents of the method, it was difficult to implement in public secondary school education. It overemphasised and distorted the similarities between naturalistic first language learning and classroom foreign language learning and failed to consider the practical realities of the classroom. In addition, it lacked a rigorous basis in applied linguistic theory, and for this reason it was often criticised by the more academically based proponents of the Reform Movement. The Direct Method represented the product of enlightened amateurism. It was perceived to have several drawbacks. It required teachers who were native speakers or who had nativelike fluency in the foreign language. It was largely dependent on the teacher's skill, rather than on a textbook, and not all teachers were proficient enough in the foreign language to adhere to the principles of the method. Critics pointed out that strict adherence to Direct Method principles was often counterproductive, since teachers were required to go to great lengths to avoid using the native language, when sometimes a simple, brief explanation in the student's native language would have been a more efficient route to comprehension.

The Harvard psychologist Roger Brown has documented similar problems with strict Direct Method techniques. He described his frustration in observing a teacher performing verbal gymnastics in an attempt to convey the meaning of Japanese words, when translation would have been a much more efficient technique (Brown 1973: 5)." (p.12-13)