THE NATURAL APPROACH William E. Yugsán MAY 12, 2015

One of the communicative approaches to language teaching Tracy Terrell and Stephen Krashen (1983) The approach focuses on: comprehensible input meaningful communication educators need to build in variety the moment they plan their lessons and class activities and poetry is … a relaxed classroom atmosphere There is a gradual progression from "Yes/No" and simple display questions, to more complex and open questions.

THE NATURAL APPROACH IN THE CLASSROOM (1) Comprehension (preproduction) (2) Early Production (3) Speech Emergence STAGE I COMPREHENSION Teach students to recognize the meaning in words used in meaningful contexts Guess at the meaning of phrases without knowing all of the words and structures the diversity of things to be conveyed using poetry also shows the magnitude of its resources

A. ALWAYS USE VISUAL AIDS (pictures, realia, gestures). STAGE I COMPREHENSION A. ALWAYS USE VISUAL AIDS (pictures, realia, gestures). B. MODIFY YOUR SPEECH C. DO NOT FORCE PRODUCTION. “silent period” D. FOCUS ATTENTION ON KEY VOCABULARY.

Stage 2 EARLY SPEECH a. open dialogues b. guided interviews Non-threatening environments Students produce voluntarily a. open dialogues b. guided interviews c. open-ended sentences d. charts, tables, graphs e. newspaper ads

Stage 3 SPEECH EMERGENCE speech production will normally improve in both quantity and quality students produce longer, more complex and they use a wider range of vocabulary. the number of errors will slowly decrease. a. preference ranking b. games of all sorts c. problem-solving using charts, tables graphs, maps d. advertisements and signs e. group discussion f. skits (finger plays, flannel boards, puppets) g. music, radio, television, film strips, slides h. writing exercises (especially Language Experience Approach) i. reading j. culture