The Natural Approach (Language Teaching Methodology) [Paperback]

Tracy D. Terrell (Other Contributor)

Product Details

• Paperback: 197 pages
• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd; Revised edition (September 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0136099343
• ISBN-13: 978-0136099345
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #275,610 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must-read, January 30, 2010

By 

H. Lahay - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Natural Approach: Language Acquisition in the Classroom (Paperback)

This is a must-read for any foreign language teacher. It has helped me immensely as a teacher. Even though the book was written a while ago, it is all still relevant today.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars theory and practice, December 16, 2006

By 

Robertson Thomas (Hapcheon, Gyeongnam, South Korea) - See all my reviews
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The author discusses theory in the first chapters and practice in the last chapters. I was more interested in theory, so the book seemed to diminuendo. For a reader who is more interested in practice, the book may seem to crescendo.

First, the author makes a quick overview of the history of second language education. It seems that the student's own language was barred from the classroom for the first time in the first decade of the Twentieth Century. If this is true, then most foreign language teachers today are 100 years behind the times.

A Korean English teacher once told me that it was dangerous for foreign language students to practice conversation where there was no teacher or no native speaker to correct errors. I didn't have the documentation handy, so I couldn't tell her that students could do better without all that error correction anyway. Too bad I didn't have the documentation in this book.

The author also summarizes schools of foreign language education other than his own baby. I have wondered how nouns could be taught in TPR (Total Physical Response), now I see that they are used as objects ("Put the book on the table"). The psychological method, the series method, the phonetic method, the direct method, and the audiolingual method are briefly defined.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very good book!, September 17, 2011

By 

ChrisMc - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Natural Approach (Language Teaching Methodology) (Paperback)

I was informally introduced to "natural method" of teaching foreign language this summer at grad school and wanted to find out more, so I bought this book. It is very informative and readable--you do not have to sort through educational jargon to comprehend the concepts. It does not claim to be exhaustive on the topic, and I think I may end up reading more elsewhere, but it does a great job explaining its methodology to someone quite new to the idea.