The Natural Approach

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Sample Classroom Activities

1. Comprehension (pre-production) activities, which consist of listening comprehension practice, with no requirement for students to speak in the target language. Comprehension is achieved by contextual guessing, TPR techniques, the use of gestures and visual aids, and data gleaned from personalized student input. One technique that Dr. Terrell uses in beginning classes is description of students in the class in terms of their color, clothing, height, and other physical attributes. Students are asked to stand up when described, or questions are asked so that students being described are identified by the others in the class.
   
   The pre-production (comprehension) phase of instruction lasts, according to Dr. Terrell, about four to five class hours for adult students, but could last several months for younger students.
   
   
2. Early speech production will occur once students have a recognition vocabulary of about 500 words. Production activities begin with questions requiring only single-word answers or with either/or questions in which the alternatives are provided. This type of production parallels that of young children who first begin to speak in holo-phrastic utterances. Another type of production activity is the sentence-completion response, in which a personalized question is asked and the answer is provided except for one word, which students supply.
   
   
3. Speech emergence occurs after the early speech production phase and is encouraged through the use of games, humanistic-affective activities, and information and problem-solving activities. During all of these activities, the teacher is careful not to correct errors, as this is potentially harmful to the students' speech development.
   
   As can be seen from this description, the Natural Approach classroom is one in which communication activities, contextualized acquisition opportunities, and humanistic learning techniques dominate.