Overview of the Natural Approach
The Following are the
Basic Five Hypotheses of the Natural Approach:
ACQUISITION-LEARNING
DISTINCTION (ALD) HYPOTHESIS
01.Language Acquisition Device (LAD) NEVER shuts off.
02.LAD grinds slow but sure.
03.Acquisition requires conscious focus on meaning.
04.Learning requires conscious focus on form.
05.Human brind (brain+mind) cannot consciously focus on two things at a time.
06.Acquisition and learning are in complementary distribution; one cannot
consciously focus both on form and meaning at the same time.
07.When speaking fluently, you can only use your (subconscious) acquired
competence (AC).
08.Learning does not become acquisition through practice (Non-interface
position).
09.You can acquire what you have learned not through conscious practice but
through exposure to input
10.Learning-then-acquisition is more of a temporal sequence rather than causal
one.
11.Acquisition with or without conscious learning is basically the same.
NATURAL ORDER (NO) HYPOTHESIS
01.Grammar rules of any language are acquired in a predetermined order.
02.NO concerns acquisiton not learning.
03.NO remains the same irrespective of learning environment, language
background, intelligence etc.
04.Teaching/learning order does not correspond to NO of acquisiton.
05.Inalterability of NO supports the non-interface position.
06.LAD is immune to conscious teaching/learning intervention.
07.You cannot acquire a rule unless you are psycholinguistically ready.
INPUT HYPOTHESIS
01.Acquisition is inevitable when one is exposed to comprehensible input (CI).
02.Acquisition takes place when conscious focus is on meaning.
03.If you try consciously to focus both on form and meaning, acquisition will
not probably take place.
04.Comprehension precedes production.
05.Speaking emerges on its own after a silent period of active listening (so
does writing, after extensive reading).
MONITOR HYPOTHESIS
01.(Conscious) learned competence (LC) act as a monitor or editor.
02.LC can correct utterances initiated by AC only if there is enough time.
03.LC also enhances comprehensibility and increase the number of CI avenues.
04.Enhanced comprehension and increased CI mean faster acquisition.
05.You should not expect LC to turn into AC.
06.The main aim in developing LC should be the facilitation of comprehension
(receptive grammar), not the conversion from LC to AC.
AFFECTIVE FILTER (AF) HYPOTHESIS
01.Only errors causing meaning problems should be corrected.
02.Error correction does not necessarily lead to the correction of errors.
03.Correcting from errors strengthen AF which, in turn, block acquisiton.
04.Forcing premature production strengthens AF as well.
Natural Approach is the oldest but not the
most old fashioned.
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