The Natural Approach by Stephen D. Krashen and Tracy D. Terrell

Subtitle: Language Acquisition in the Classroom

(Book Review)

Why I Read This Book

                I suspect few people outside of the TESOL industry have ever heard of Stephen Krashen (W), but inside the world of English teachers he is probably the most famous name in the field.  Although, much like Freud is to the field of psychology, Krashen is probably more famous for the debates he’s provoked—he’s more famous for people reacting against his theories— than he is for being an uncontested authority in the field.

                I’m not sure I agree with everything Krashen says, but his name pops up in TESOL literature enough that I figured he was worth reading.  We had to study his theories in graduate school, and many of the books I’ve read on second language acquisition have spent considerable space talking about his theories: see: here, here, here, here and here.  (Although granted, often these books will bring up Krashen’s theories just for the sake of pointing out their flaws.)

I’ve even referenced Krashen by name a couple times on this blog (here, here and here), so I figured I should read him just to make sure that I wasn’t mischaracterizing him.  (Which, actually as it turns out, I now think I kind of was misrepresenting him in my previous posts—more on that below).

                A secondary reason why I decided to pick up this book was that it was listed as recommended reading in the Delta course (W) which I had been doing last year.  So I’m also counting this book as part of my Delta reading list.

Background Information

                In order to explain my reaction to this book, I’ll first write what I had already known about Krashen (or thought I knew) prior to starting this book.

                In graduate school, Krashen was introduced to us in the context of Chomskyian theories about first language acquisition making their way into the field of second language learning in the late 1970s/ early 1980s.

                Chomsky had argued that children pick up the grammar of their first language simply by being exposed to it. 

                Krashen had also argued that second language learners, even adult second language learners, can subconsciously pick up the grammar of the target language simply by being exposed to it.  Krashen called this exposure to the language “input”.

Krashen qualified this by saying that the input had to be at a level the learner could understand and could engage with.  So, for example, a beginning learner couldn’t hope to improve their language by listening to the radio news, but they could benefit if someone was talking to them using very simple, graded language, at the level the learner could understand—the same way caretakers talk to children in simple language.  Krashen called this “comprehensible input”—input at a level the learner could understand.

Krashen thought that the best type of comprehensible input was input that was just only slightly above the learner’s current level of language.  This ideal input would still be understandable to the learner, but would contain some vocabulary or grammar structures that the learner had not yet acquired, but was ready to acquire.  Krashen called this ideal form of input “i+1”.

                Ever since Krashen first published his theories, it has been a subject of debate whether conscious grammar instruction is useful in the foreign language classroom, and if so, how much.

My Previous Misconceptions

                I had previously been under the impression that Krashen was totally against conscious grammar instruction.  I had thought Krashen believed the learning of conscious grammar rules was not only a waste of time, but that it interfered with true acquisition.  But now, after having read his book, I’ve found that this is not true at all.  (I’m not entirely sure how I arrived at this misconception.  It could have been that Krashen’s theories were misrepresented to me somewhere along the line, or it could have been my own misinterpretation.  I’m going to go ahead and assume it was my fault.)

                Krashen, it turns out, is actually not against part of the class being focused on conscious grammar instruction, and in fact he believes conscious memorization of grammar rules have their place in areas like writing and prepared speech.  What he does believe is that consciously memorized grammar rules exist in a different part of the brain from truly acquired language.  The learner can only use the conscious grammar rules when they have time to consciously monitor their language (e.g. writing, prepared speech).  Truly acquired language—the kind of language that someone can speak without even thinking about it—can only come from exposure to comprehensible input, Krashen believes.

The Review

                I have a confession to make: I really struggled in graduate school to read the highly academic research papers published in the field of Applied Linguistics.

                For that reason, I assumed Krashen’s writings would also be difficult to read.

                I was therefore pleasantly surprised to find out how readable this little book is.  The prose is clear, it’s perfectly understandable, and it reads quickly.

                This may be because this book is written specifically for teachers, and not academics.  It’s possible that Krashen’s research articles are written in an entirely different tone.  I don’t know.  But I can say that this book is highly readable, and need not intimidate anyone.

                I’m also not sure how much of the prose style of this book is Krashen, or is due to the influence of Krashen’s co-author, Tracy Terrell.  (And actually, I should probably apologize for giving co-author Tracy Terrell (W) short shrift in this review, and only focusing on Krashen’s name.  I do this because Krashen is the much more famous name in the field of second language acquisition, but I’m not sure how much of the prose style, the theories, or the activities in this book should actually be credited to Terrell * )

                As this is largely a pedagogical book for teachers, only the first two chapters focus on outlining the theory.  The rest of the book suggests ideas and activities about how the Natural Approach can be implemented in the classroom.  All of these activities suggest ways in which the teacher can introduce comprehensible input into the classroom.

My Own Thoughts/Reactions/ Ideas

                My own thoughts are constantly in a state of flux, mostly because, like a lot of teachers, I tend to be largely in a reactive mode.

(A colleague of mine once said that teachers are constantly reacting to their last disaster.  If you have a classroom that’s bad on listening, for example, then you tend to start really emphasizing listening activities in all your classes—until you run into a class that’s really bad on reading, and then you completely switch focus again, et cetera.)

During the 5 years I spent working as an Assistant English Teacher in the Japanese public schools, I saw very clearly that the focus on only memorizing grammar rules was not working.  Japanese people spend 8 years studying English (from junior high through to university), and most of them struggle to put together even a simple sentence in English.  As Krashen would explain it, they have conscious knowledge of grammar rules in their monitor, but they can only use this conscious knowledge when they have time to monitor their speech.  Thus they are unable to engage in any real-time communication.

However, during the three years I spent working for the English conversation schools in Japan,  in which the only focus was on developing oral fluency, I saw quite clearly the opposite problem.  Students had gotten very good at expressing their ideas and communicating, but had developed very idiomatic, ungrammatical English.

                After the experience of English conversation schools, I tended to focus quite heavily on grammar for a while.

                However, more recently, in many of my classes at my current school, I’ve noticed how my current school curriculum often tries to force the students to learn a number of grammar points the students don’t seem ready to acquire.  I’ve noticed that no matter how much I drill and I drill these grammar points, the students will often still miss many of them on the grammar test.  This has caused me to again question the value of grammar drills and exercises.

                In addition, I’ve noticed that many of the street children here in Cambodia (my current teaching context) have very fluent English, many of them with near perfect grammar and perfect pronunciation.  And they’ve acquired this high degree of fluency without the benefit of any formal instruction, but simple from interacting with international tourists.

                Krashen and Terrell are in fact well aware that for centuries,  merchants and sellers have, simply through daily interaction, learned foreign languages to a degree of fluency that’s never been duplicated in a classroom focused on conscious grammar rules.  This is why they call their method “The Natural Approach,”—as in, this is the way human beings have naturally learned languages for centuries before the advent of formal grammar study in the classrooms.

                And yet, I still tend to think conscious grammar study is useful at some point.  From my own anecdotal experience, the Japanese people I knew who spoke English the best spent plenty of time exposing themselves to English, but were also very conscientious about carefully studying the grammar of the language.  (As opposed to many of the students I had in the English conversation schools in Japan who only focused on speaking, and whose grammatical inaccuracies only fossilized rather than improved.)  This is only anecdotal observations, of course, but it made an impression on me.

                In addition to my own anecdotal experiences, there have been more careful scientific studies that have also appeared to confirm that simply comprehensible input by itself isn’t enough to acquire all of the grammatical forms.  In his book, Rod Ellis talks about studies of French-immersion students in Canada.  The students are able to acquire the easier grammatical forms just from the input alone, but there are several other forms that are resistant to acquisition from input alone.

                One of the most famous qualitative studies of a learner in an immersion environment was Richard Schmidt’s study of a Wes.  (This study pops up in pretty much every book you read on second language acquisition).  Despite living in Hawaii, being very extroverted, talking in English constantly, and being surrounded by rich input, Wes never acquired grammatical competence in English, and just did all his interactions in his own form of ungrammatical idiomatic English.

                The cumulative effect of all of this is that I’ve come to believe that conscious grammar study is useful for the students, but only after the students have been exposed to this grammar point enough so that they’re ready to acquire it.  Introducing a completely new grammatical structure to the students in the classroom will always result in failure, no matter how many times you drill them on it (as I’ve discovered through experience.)  Rather, it seems to me, the best way to do things is to expose the students to plenty of comprehensible input over time so that they can see the grammar structure many times before they’re ever asked to use it in a grammar class.  Then, once they’ve reached a level where they are ready to start using it, then the conscious grammar study and conscious focus on grammar rules will help them acquire it faster.

                In this, I used to think I differed from Krashen much more than I actually do, because I used to think Krashen thought focusing on conscious grammar rules was harmful for acquisition.  Now that I know that Krashen is not opposed to some conscious grammar study, it turns out I’m much closer to him than I previously thought. 

I believe the majority of the class time should be spent on comprehensible input, and Krashen and Terrell do as well.  I believe that some grammar instruction is still beneficial, and, it turns out, so do Krashen and Terrell.  In my own classroom, I’ve recently been trying to do two-thirds comprehensible input, one-third grammar study.  Krashen and Terrell recommend 80% comprehensible input, and 20% grammar study, but I won’t quibble about the exact percentages—it’s still very similar.

                The only major difference between my thinking and Krashen’s is that I tend to believe that consciously studying and drilling a grammar point can aid acquisition.  This is again based on my own observations that the best English speakers in Japan were also conscious grammar studies.  And it is also how I learned Japanese.  I would learn a grammar feature out of the textbook, then I would try it out in real life, and then after enough tries I would eventually (more or less) acquire it, to the point where it began rolling off the tongue without much conscious thought. 

                Krashen and Terrell, on the other hand, believe that any consciously studied grammar point never reaches the level of subconscious acquisition, no matter how much you practice it.  Consciously studied grammar is only useful to help the student temporarily perform above the current level of their acquisition, and only in situations where the student has time to monitor their language.

                But, it sounds like this difference of opinion is only theoretical.  Whether one believes that conscious study of grammar rules truly aids acquisitions, or is only useful for monitoring speech, practically speaking both ways of thinking amount to a classroom that is largely focused on comprehensible input, but allows a little bit of time for conscious grammar study.

The Role of Speech Production in the Natural Approach

                Although Krashen would disagree with it, there is view of language learning that says that learning a new language is all about forming good habits.  At first, new words and grammatical structures are very difficult to say.  You have to use all your attention and conscious energy just to make sure you get the form exactly right.  But with enough practice, the structure eventually becomes automatic, and then it rolls off the tongue without you even having to think about it.

                Occasionally, this theory is used to explain the order of acquisition—the research findings that learners always seem to acquire the same grammatical forms in the same order, regardless of which order the forms are taught.  According to the cognitivist** view, the learner only has enough brain power to focus their attention on a few things at a time, and so anytime they are speaking in real-time, they must inevitably sacrifice accuracy on some things in order to concentrate on others.  However, as they get more and more practice with certain forms, these forms start to become automatic, and the attention can then shift to focus on other forms.

                Krashen appears to reject this view.

                The view of language learning through good habit formation is most closely associated with the Audio-Lingual method, which Krashen and Terrell criticize heavily in their opening chapters. 

                Instead, Krashen and Terrell believe that the key to language fluency is all about comprehensible input, and not about practicing speaking.

                Speaking, in their view, doesn’t need to be taught.  Give the learner enough comprehensible input, and speaking will automatically arise out of comprehension.

                As Krashen and Terrell write on page 56: “According to the Input hypothesis, speaking is not absolutely essential for language acquisition.  We acquire from what we hear (or read) and understand, not from what we say.  The Input hypothesis claims that the best way to teach speaking is to focus on listening (and reading) and spoken fluency will emerge on its own.”  [emphasis in the original]

                To my mind, there seem to be a couple problems with this view, just based off of everyday life experience.  For one thing, it certainly seems that when you’re learning a new language, part of the learning process is getting your tongue around the sounds and structures.  In my own experience learning Japanese, it seemed to me that certain structures were becoming more automatic just because I had practiced saying them so many times.

                Also, if speaking arises naturally out of comprehension, then how to explain the many children from bilingual families who will often grow up able to only understand, but not speak, one of two languages in their household?

                In my own view, I definitely agree with Krashen and Terrell that comprehension should precede production, perhaps often by a period of several weeks or months.  But at some point, won’t production have to be practiced before fluency can arise?  And when production is ready to emerge, at this point maybe even the audio-lingual drills that Krashen hates so much may be of some value?

                However, the interesting thing about the classroom activities suggested in the Natural Approach is how much of them rely on students talking to each other in small groups.

                Students talking to each other in small groups is nothing new, of course.  Any language classroom these days relies on students talking to each other in small groups.  But it’s usually done for the sake of giving students opportunity to practice production.  If the goal of the classroom is not to practice production, but to provide quality input for students, then small group discussions are harder to justify, because the students will be providing flawed, grammatically incorrect input to each other.

                There is some debate about whether students in small group discussions will pick up each other’s grammar mistakes, and thus it could be doing them more harm than good.  Rod Ellis mentions this in his book, and Krashen and Terrell are also aware of the dangers, and discuss the pros and cons of group discussions.  (“…it is an open question whether this sort of ‘interlanguage talk’ is harmful or helpful (or what is more likely both) for language acquisition.” (p. 97))

                If the goal of the activity is to give students an opportunity to practice production, then small group activities and discussions make sense, because in a large classroom it’s the only way to give all the students a lot of time to practice speaking.  But if practicing production is not important to your theory of language learning, then it strikes me as harder to justify small group discussions.

However, Krashen and Terrell justify these activities by saying:

“Comprehensible input is the most important element in language acquisition.  In beginning stages, the instructor devotes must [sic] of the time to providing this input directly to the students.  As the acquisition process develops, although we still wish to continue providing comprehensible input, the instructor must also provide for activities in which the student has the opportunity to produce the target language.  Although we do not believe that production per se results in more acquisition (or in better acquisition) [emphasis added] it is important since speech will lead to more responses from the instructor and other students. (p.124)

                So I guess the goal is to give the students practice in managing the conversations in order for them to be able to get better input.

                I suppose that makes sense. 

Still, I’m a little surprised at how many of the activities in The Natural Approach revolve around students talking to each other, given that Krashen and Terrell don’t believe it’s necessary to practice speaking in order to acquire a language.  One would almost think that, given Krashen and Terrell’s theory that all acquisition comes from input, their classrooms would revolve around reading graded readers, or listening to stories, or watching movies in the class. 

                Some of this might be because the book was written in 1982.  Graded readers for ESL classrooms probably weren’t widely available back then.  (In fact, if I’m not mistaken, the huge emphasis on graded readers for language acquisition, and the mass publication of many different series of graded readers, came about as a direct result of the influence of Krashen and his theories.  So of course, they wouldn’t have been as available back when Krashen first started writing.)  Similarly, multi-media classrooms, in which listening devices and video projectors are so readily available these days, might have been less available back in 1982.

Anyway, I bring this whole issue up, because it’s related to a question we’ve been discussing a lot lately at my school:

Should Learners Ever Be Forced to Produce?

                In my current classes, the higher level older students are very confident in their production skills, and talk all the time.  (In many of my EAP classes, the students are so talkative that I largely just stand back and let them chat away to each other for most of the class.)  The problem comes with the Young Learner program, where the students are aged 11-15, and many of them are very reluctant to speak English in class.  This may be because of adolescent shyness as much as it is because of linguistics reasons.  It becomes a problem, however, because in our school all the students are assessed every 10 weeks on their speaking skills.

                There is a debate about whether or not the Young Learners should be forced to speak English when they are reluctant to do so.  With my typical indecisiveness, I’ve argued both sides of the debate over the years.  Under the influence of cognitivist theories of language learning, I’ve argued that they needed to practice speaking in order to gain fluency.

                Now, after having read Krashen’s book, I’ve been tempted to argue the other way.  “We shouldn’t assess young learners on their speaking,” I told the Young Learner lead teacher.  “Just provide them with enough comprehensible input, and they’ll decide on their own when they’re ready to start speaking.”

                After all, as Krashen says: “Younger acquirers also tend to exhibit a longer silent period.  A serious problem is thus created by trying to force production before a wide range of listening comprehension has been done” (p. 179)

                “Yes,” responded the Young Learner lead teacher, “but Krashen’s silent period only refers to beginning students.  By the time they reach Young Learner level 9” (one of the intermediate levels at our school), “they should be producing.”

                And he was right.  From what Krashen and Terrell write in this book, it does appear that this extended silent period is only for beginning students.  And yet, what would Krashen say about a classroom full of intermediate adolescents who were still reluctant to produce?  Would he ever argue that forcing production is okay?  Or would he still argue that the students themselves will choose when they are ready to produce.

                I suspect it would be the latter.  At any rate, recently in my own classes I’ve decided in favor of the latter.  In classes that are ready to produce, I arrange for a lot of speaking activities.  In classes, like my Young Learner classes, which are reluctant to produce, I do more reading and listening comprehension activities: more graded readers, more movies, more songs. 

                If the cognitivist view is correct, then I’m probably doing these students a disfavor by not focusing more on production in class.  But if Krashen is correct, then I suppose I’m doing what I should be doing: feed the students enough comprehensible input, and speaking will emerge on its own when the students are ready.

Other Observations

* In all fairness, I should point out that Krashen and Terrell are aware of some of the potential holes in their theory.  They do address the fact that some adult learners are exposed to plenty of comprehensible input and yet never develop competence in the foreign language.  And they do have provisions to address this—for example, the affective filter theory.  They believe that the input will never become acquired language unless learner is interested and engaged with the comprehensible input in a relaxed environment.  If the learner is stressed out or uninterested in the input, it simply gets blocked by the learner’s affective filter.  So children learn languages better because they have a low affective filter, and some adults can also learn languages well provided their affective filter is also low.  Any adult who fails to learn a language in spite of availability to comprehensible input must have a high affective filter.

                All of this may or may not be true.  As Lightbown and Spada point out in their book, one of the frequent criticisms of Krashen is that he proposes a lot of theories that are difficult to test in concrete terms.

* On Pronunciation: 
In terms of pronunciation, Krashen and Terrell do not advocate any pronunciation activities:

                “In a recent study, however, Purcell and Suter surveyed acquirers of English as a second language, and concluded that accuracy of pronunciation of English correlated with the acquirers’ first language (speakers of Arabic and Farsi had better accents than speakers of Japanese and Thai), the amount of interaction with English speakers, performance on a test of phonetic ability, and the degree of concern that speakers had about their accent.  Surprisingly enough, the amount of formal training in ESL, even when the courses were specifically aimed at pronunciation, did not relate to pronunciation ability.  Thus, it may be possible that direct classroom exercises are of limited use.

Pronunciation ability, or good accent, may be nearly completely dependent on what has been acquired, not on rules which have been learned.  It is possible to learn conscious rules about pronunciation, but performers, especially in the beginning stages, usually have too many more important things to attend to in performance.

 …  Thus, in the Natural Approach we do not recommend any specific activities for pronunciation, especially in early stages” (p. 89-90).

                This is in direct contrast to another book I’ve read recently, Sound Foundations by Adrian Underhill, which was nothing but suggestions on specific activities for pronunciation.

                As I mentioned in my review of Adrian Underhill, I’m a bit conflicted on the issue myself.  The students in my class with the best pronunciation seem to have gotten this good pronunciation without any specific training or drills—rather, they simply acquired it because of enough exposure to the language.

                The difficulty, however, comes with the students who have terrible pronunciation despite having had plenty of exposure to English.  And it is for this latter group of students that I begin to think Adrian Underhill’s activities might be of some value.

                It could be that some of the pronunciation problems I see in my classes might be because students have been forced to speak too early, and thus early pronunciation errors were fossilized.  For this reason, Krashen and Terrell advocate that beginners have a “silent period” in which they just listen to the language, but are not forced to produce until they have become familiar with it. 

                Although I don’t currently teach any absolute beginners, this “silent period” idea makes a lot of sense to me.  I fact, I often think my pronunciation problems with Japanese (I never fully got my tongue around the Japanese lateral sound, and always pronounced it like an English “r” ) may have been because I tried to produce too early on, without fully having absorbed the sounds of the language, and then bad habits were formed that I never fully rectified.

* On Teacher Talking Time: 
In the CELTA (W), or any English teaching training course these days, teacher talking time is always regarded as a bad thing.  It’s seen as taking away talking time from the students, and putting too much focus on the teacher.

                Krashen and Terrell, by contrast, think that teacher talking time is actually more valuable than whatever grammar exercise is being done in the textbook. 

                “Teacher talk is foreigner talk in the second language classroom.  It is the language of classroom management and explanation, when it is in the target language.  There is good evidence that teacher talk is also roughly tuned to the level of the acquirer.  Teacher talk as well is motivated by the desire to communicate.  It may thus be the case that ‘caretaker speech’ is available to adult second language acquirers and that it has approximately the same effect on them as it does on children.

                Most classroom exercises in grammar-based approaches attempt to be finely tuned; teacher talk will most likely be roughly tuned.  If the input hypothesis is correct, however, teacher talk is actually more valuable!  When we “just talk” to our students, if they understand, we are not only giving a language lesson, we may be giving the best possible language lesson since we will be supplying input for acquisition.  Roughly tuned input has several real advantages over finely-tuned exercises: with rough tuning, we are always assured that i+1 will be covered, while with finely tuned exercises, we are taking a guess as to where the student is.  With roughly tuned input, we are assured of constant recycling and review; this is not the case with ‘lock-step’ exercises.  Third, roughly tuned input will be good for more than one acquirer at a time, even when they are at slightly different levels.  Finally, roughly tuned caretaker-like speech in the form of teacher talk or foreigner talk, will nearly always be more interesting than an exercise that focuses just on one grammatical point” (p.34-35—emphasis in the original).

Other Notes

* According to the Wikipedia entry on this book (W), the idea that some degree of conscious grammar study can be beneficial is actually Terrell’s idea, and not Krashen’s.  But I’m assuming Krashen wasn’t against it or he wouldn’t have put his name on a book that was advocating some limited conscious grammar study as a supplement to comprehensible input.

** I hope I’m using the right terminology here for what I’ve deemed the “cognitivist view”.  If I’m getting the terminology wrong or misrepresenting the theory, someone feel free to correct me in the comments section.

Link of the Day 
A Conversation With Prof. Noam Chomsky (2015)