“This could be referred to as the “Great Paradox of Language Teaching”: Language is best taught when it is being used to transmit messages, not when it is explicitly taught for conscious learning.” (p. 55)
Introduction
Thinking back, I don’t remember Mr. Farrell’s lesson on the past perfect tense, but I do remember rushing from world history to English class, slanting and squirming through the shuffling masses so I could get a seat next to Alison Valentine. It was important to take the western hall, down the lime-green granite stairs and edge pass Mr. Simpleton's freshman Biology class before they filled the hall and blocked my path. Rodney Milman would get there before me if that had happened. You see, our 9th grade English teacher, fresh off a college-education, resisted the chalk-and-talk style and often put us into pairs with the person seated next to us. God bless him.
I can’t remember a lick of the actual content of that English class, but I remember the skinny hands of the clock creeping towards the 12 in world history, the way I vaulted down the stairs from the third to second floor, the look on Rodney’s face when he came heaving into Mr. Farrell's classroom and Ali, the slow smile and soft warmth of her tone when it was time for us to work together, “Hey, Josh.”
Mr. Farrell would be ecstatic if now, 20 years later, I remembered any of his lesson plans with the same level of detail as I do my route from world history to English. Is there any way to bring that experience into the classroom? Into my own Japanese studies? Probably not, but keeping this memory in mind will help me do a much better job than most other teachers.
You are lucky Josh, you no longer work in a school system. There are no mandates. You are in control of how you study Japanese, how you teach your children English, and how you organize your online lessons for private students. Remember, conscious learning of language rules and patterns is not what you or your students want. What’s the goal when learning a foreign language? Let’s keep it simple: you want to be able to understand messages and communicate ideas at a near-native level. This leaves out the past perfect tense, the passive voice, and a horde of esoteric terminology no high school student should be forced to regurgitate.
Create interesting lessons that solves problems and engages students. Keep the following in mind when teaching and learning:
| The Natural Approach in Practice |
|---|
1. The Lesson - Do not teach lessons, solve problems |
2. The Atmosphere - Do not demand obedience, reduce anxiety |
3. The Feedback - Do not fix mistakes, model and repeat |
4. The Wild Card - Interest trumps everything |
1. The Lesson: Do not teach lessons, solve problems
“Is this going to be on the test?”
No question pisses off teachers more than this one. It certainly pissed me off. I would be in the midst of a lesson, the introduction carefully crafted to maximize engagement, shifting to the target vocabulary and grammar, setting clear objectives, modeling real-world applications for the students to relate to, breaking up the class into pre-planned groups designed for individual personalities to feed and grow off each other, and then, just as all of the pieces of the lesson would come together to form a coherent chunk of producible knowledge, some dick would ask if this would be on the test.
Remember Josh, you are the dick, not the student. Students are people, and people pay attention to information that helps them solve a problem. They are practical. The problem for students in class is that they need to get a good grade, and, to a large extent, grades are determined by test scores. They are not in class to be awed by your lesson planning prowess.
A painful lesson to learn for a teacher trying to sell their knowledge in the real world is that people pay money to solve problems. A lesson on the present perfect is far less compelling than one on how to talk about your past experience during a job interview. You can imagine the situation, relate to it, and want to know more about it.Remember this Josh, in your personal practice, test yourself and your students based on situations rather than on specific lexical items. You are studying a foreign language to communicate, and so are your students. Serve their needs before relying on a textbook to tell you what their needs are. Solve problems. Look at the table at the end of the article for a list of situations Krashen suggests in The Natural Approach.
When it comes to language acquisition, forget the textbook.
2. The Atmosphere: Do not demand obedience, reduce anxiety
This isn’t some wussy plea for teachers to coddle each student like a newborn babe. Besides the fact that obedience should be a byproduct of an engaging lesson and down-to-earth instructor, an obsession with the rules is boring. Remember the goal:
You want to understand messages and communicate ideas at a near-native level.
That goal takes time, a lot of time. And I tend to spend my time doing things I enjoy (when I can help it). The same holds true for my students. I didn’t quit every single Japanese class I ever took because I was having a blast. I felt stupid. I felt stressed. This is to be expected when you deliver pre-packaged content from a sterile textbook to a class of 20+ students while imposing artificial goals that fail to take into account individual motivation.
Reducing anxiety is not about being nice, but thinking instead about student-centered goals. One of the five hypotheses Krashen puts forth is the Affective Filter Hypothesis, “…the best situations for language acquisition seem to be those which encourage lower anxiety levels… people who are motivated and who have a positive self-image will seek and obtain more input” (p. 38). This is the combination you are after, Josh, you want to have a study routine (a lesson plan) that aligns with your goals and personality. Keep the sessions short. Make the content easy. Aim to understand more than 90% of the input. Use material from movies and TV shows you would watch in your free time. Single out scenes that deal with relatable situations and cherry-pick a few phrases to add to your flashcard deck. Make time to review what you have learned. Relax and have a good time. You are going to be doing this for a while. There is no reason to be obsessed with rules, unless you are a masochist.
3. The Feedback: Do not fix mistakes, model and repeat
Nothing pisses me off more than a teacher who corrects every mistake. It teaches me one thing: I should not speak. Unfortunately, I have encountered plenty of students who have been conditioned to crave pain. “Correct my mistakes, please;” this sounds like a nightmare.
Imagine interrupting a student every five seconds to tweak their speech. Here are three negative effects that come to mind:
- It focuses on form rather than the message.
- It decreases motivation to speak in the future.
- It disrupts meaningful communication.
And the so-called positive effect? The student will learn from their mistake. Test that assumption in class the day after you make a correction. I have. Students hardly remember specifics. Krashen puts it even more bluntly, “The direct correction of speech errors appears to have almost no effect on first language and child second language acquisition” (p. 177).
Caretaker speech, the way we talk to babies and toddlers, provides a few hints on how to deal with the issue. When we communicate with infants, we point out mistakes by repeating and rewording, increasing awareness while careful not to disrupt the flow of ideas or discourage the kid. I have yet to find a compelling reason to veer from this approach in adult learners. And at least when it comes to your own studies, Josh, teachers who overcorrect kill your motivation. Stay away from them.
| Caretaker Speech: A Window into Language Acquisition |
|---|
Characteristic #1 - Parents use language to communicate (not teach). |
Characteristic #2 - Grammar and vocabulary are simplified to ensure understanding. |
Characteristic #3 - The most important tense is the simple present, past and future tenses are hardly ever employed. |
4. The Wild Card: Interest trumps everything
All languages are infinite. You can study one for decades and still feel ignorant. I can take a one-minute video clip of a conversation and turn it into a three-hour lesson. This is both depressing and inspiring. It is depressing to realize you will always feel something missing, and inspiring to know you can take almost any piece of life and use it to learn. So why on earth would you keep buying fucking textbooks? They don’t interest you, Josh.
Never forget the goal: You want to understand messages and communicate ideas at a near-native level. Consider the magnitude of this undertaking. You are going to commit to learning something you will never completely understand. You better enjoy it.
Take an inventory of what you enjoy in English. Find ways to do the same in Japanese. You already have a list of TV shows and movies in your head. Work to build up your fluency so you can start studying with these resources. The initial part will be rough. You will have to make memory palaces for over 2000 kanji characters. You will have to create flash cards of words, phrases, and example sentences to build up your comprehension before you can use more enjoyable resources, but that is not a problem. When you do something, you like to do it well. Optimizing your memory with a spaced repetition system, relying on frequency lists to build your vocabulary, and focusing on comprehension rather than production in these initial stages are indeed interesting for an introvert like you, Josh. Get over the initial hump and you will soon merge your studies with your hobbies.
“…our goal is to involve students so deeply in the message that they actually “forget” it is encoded in another language” (p.134).
| Goals in the Natural Approach Class (Situations) | |
|---|---|
Preliminary Unit: Learning to UnderstandTOPICS:Names, description of students, family, numbers, clothing, colors, objects in the classroom SITUATIONS:Greetings, classroom commands |
|
I. Students in the ClassroomTOPICS:Personal identification (name, address, telephone number, age, nationality date of birth, marital status), description of school environment (identification, description and location of people and objects in the classroom, description and location of buildings), classes, telling time |
II. Recreation and leisure activitiesTOPICS:Favorite activities, sports and games, climate and seasons, weather, seasonal activities, holiday activities, parties, abilities, cultural and artistic interests SITUATIONS:Playing games, sport |
III. Family, friends and daily activitiesTOPICS:Family and relatives, physical states, emotional states, daily activities, holiday and vacation activities, pets SITUATIONS:Introductions, meeting people, visiting relatives |
IV. Plans, obligations, and careersTOPICS:Immediate future plans, general future activities, obligations, hopes and desires, careers and professions, place of work, work activities, salary and money SITUATIONS:Job interview, talking on the job |
V. ResidenceTOPICS:Place of residence, rooms of a house, furniture and household items, activities at home, household items, amenities SITUATIONS:Looking for a place to live, moving |
VI. Narrating Past ExperiencesTOPICS:Immediate past events, yesterday’s activities, weekend events, holidays and parties, trips and vacations, experiences SITUATIONS:Friends recounting experiences |
VII. Health, Illnesses, and EmergenciesTOPICS:Parts of the body, physical states, mental states and moods, health maintenance, health professions, medicines and diseases SITUATIONS:Visits to doctor, hospitals, health interviews, buying medicines, emergencies (accidents) |
VIII. EatingTOPICS:Foods, beverages SITUATIONS:Ordering a meal in a restaurant, shopping in a supermarket, preparing food from recipes |
IX. Travel and TransportationTOPICS:Geography, modes of transportation, vacations, experiences on trips, languages, new experiences SITUATIONS:Buying gasoline, exchanging money, clearing customs, obtaining lodging, buying tickets, making reservations |
X. Shopping and BuyingTOPICS:Money and prices, fashions, gifts, products SITUATIONS:Selling and buying, shopping, bargaining |
XI. YouthTOPICS:Childhood experiences, primary school experiences, teen years experiences, adult expectations and activities SITUATIONS:Reminiscing with friends, sharing photo albums, looking at school yearbooks |
XII. Giving Directions and InstructionsTOPICS:Giving orders at home, giving instructions at school, following maps, finding locations, following game instructions, giving an invitation, making an appointment SITUATIONS:Looking for a place to live, movin |
XIII. ValuesTOPICS:Family, friendship, love, marriage, sex roles and stereotypes, goals, religious beliefs |
XIV. Issues and current eventsTOPICS:Environmental problems, economic issues, education, employment and careers, ethical issues, politics, crime, sports, social events, cultural events, minority groups, science and health SITUATIONS:Discussing last night’s news broadcast, discussing a recent movie |
Table 1. Goals in a Natural Approach Class. Krashen, S. D. (1996). The Natural Approach: Language Acquisition in the Classroom (Revised ed.). Janus Book Pub/Alemany Pr.