Improving the Effectiveness
of the Natural Approach
AUTHORS: Mary Ann Boyd and John Boyd
SUBJECT: Foreign Language / ESL
GRADE: High School
SUMMARY:
By being certain that our activities interest students and involve them throughout the lesson, we have discovered that a more natural approach to language learning, one that focuses first on listening comprehension, is a valid and workable approach in our foreign language classrooms.
PURPOSE:
Whether called the listening comprehension approach, the receptive approach, or the natural way, approaches that emphasize the natural order of language acquisition in foreign language learning and on the development of listening skills before speaking have been well received by both language teachers and their students. Researchers working with military language programs and university language classes since the early 1970's have presented a convincing argument for the merits of such an approach and, in general, resulting classroom practice has verified research results.
But in attempting to apply the results of that research to the high school foreign language classroom, we discovered certain shortcomings which lessened the effectiveness of the approach with our students. These shortcomings fell within the realms of meaningfulness and student involvement. Any approach called comprehension or natural has at its essence the concept of comprehensibility; that is, any input which the teacher uses must be comprehensible or understandable to the students. Simply put, without comprehension there is no comprehension approach. Over time, however, comprehension became the main focus and student interest seemed of secondary importance. Somehow it was assumed that material that was comprehensible was by its very nature interesting and had an innate meaningfulness for each student. In our attempts to employ a listening comprehension approach in our classrooms, it became evident that what is comprehensible does not necessarily have meaningfulness for the student or is always able to hold student interest.
For example, if a teacher calls a student to the front of the class and proceeds to describe what that student is wearing, through the aid of gestures and visual cues the other students can comprehend what is being said. However, unless these students possess an intrinsic motivation to learn that keeps them focused on what the teacher is saying, lack of student interest may disengage the students from the lesson. So to comprehensibility must be added meaningfulness to students -- material to spark student interest.
Secondly, the technique described above is primarily passive -- the teacher speaks and the students silently comprehend (and it is hoped internalize). Our high school students, we discovered, needed to be actively involved in language learning in the classroom. Even though they might not be speaking, they needed to be actively responding to the material as it was being presented to them.
DESCRIPTION:
How have we devised lessons to both interest students and involve them? One method employs questions and concrete ways to verify if comprehension has occurred. For example, if a teacher points to a picture and says, "This is a horse. A horse has four legs. This horse is jumping." etc. neither student interest nor involvement is necessarily evident.
But if the teacher changes to a questioning format and asks students, "Does this horse have four legs? Is this horse jumping? Is this a horse or a cow? Does it have four heads or four legs? Is it jumping or flying?" etc. an avenue for input that can be meaningful has been provided. Why do we all love games like Jeopardy and Trivial Pursuit? Primarily because we have been given an opportunity to test our knowledge of material we know or we should know. In the same way, questions in the foreign language classroom can trigger that same interest and desire to show knowledge in the target language.
The second piece of the process -- the need to actively involve students -- is built into a questioning format. When asked a question, students like, if possible, to supply an answer. The method by which that answer is supplied, however, is of central importance. If the questions are posed and the students are called on after each question, by the end of a series of questions it becomes evident which students can easily supply the answers and who cannot.
Oftentimes the more proficient students are giving the answers while the less proficient ones are still processing the question. This can result in some students becoming frustrated and losing confidence. If, on the other hand, the students are given some means of verifying their knowledge in private, either by marking a grid or writing the answer in their notebooks, then each student can perform at his/her own pace.
The questioning format also provides a built-in reason for oral correction because once students have made a commitment by putting a response on paper, they want to know if it is correct. So in this process, students are continuously verifying comprehension and are involved in that verification while pursuing a game-like activity.
Mary Ann Boyd or John Boyd
maboyd@.ilstu.edu / jrboyd@ilstu.edu University High School 7100 Illinois
State University Normal, IL 61790-7100 ph 309 438-8346 fax 309 438-5198
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