Natural Language Training

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Natural Language Training

NATURAL LANGUAGE TRAINING DEFINED

All language instructors and professors want their students to have a great learning environment, with a dynamic and innovative methodology that produces fantastic outcomes. They want their students to be able to interact naturally in the target language by understanding and speaking to native speakers with confidence. In the pages that follow is a brief look at a radical paradigm shift of language training and learning called Natural Language Training. It not only questions everything that exists in the traditional language classroom but it also offers a viable performance-based solution that has shown consistent results over the past 25 years.

HOW IS NATURAL LANGUAGE TRAINING DIFFERENT?

Natural Language Training is so radically different from the academic-based Traditional Approach that there needs to be a clear delineation between the two systems, which are wholly incompatible with each other. Natural Language Training has borrowed nothing from the Traditional Approach, and likewise there is nothing that the Traditional Approach can offer Natural Language Training. Some of the differences listed below are lengthy in their presentation, but this is necessary in order to put both systems into perspective with each other. We harbor absolutely no sympathy for the Traditional Approach to teaching and learning languages, and it is time that everyone begin to seriously question the use of textbooks, language labs, and other media in those classrooms.

ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF NATURAL LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

The natural language acquisition process is universal among all humans, and the essential elements of this process must be incorporated into any language training and learning program for it to be effective. Each of the following elements represents an essential component to the natural language acquisition process, and is included in the performance-based Natural Language Training system. Their omission by the academic-based Traditional Approach, due to its nearly complete reliance on textbooks, reading and writing, language labs, computer programs, DVDs, and other ad hoc devices and media, severely restricts and impairs a student’s linguistic development in the target language.