When you were young, you didn’t learn your native language consciously, but rather acquired it by being immersed in it: your parents spoke it to you in a manner appropriate to your level, you heard it in cartoons, etc. When you started studying it consciously in school, you already had an intuitive foundation in it.
The popular belief is that this ability to acquire a language intuitively dies out after our first few years. However, second-language acquisition research shows the opposite. As adults, we simply become more anxious, more concerned with speaking properly. We constantly worry about making mistakes, and don’t interact with native speakers to acquire more input. These factors hinder fluency. The linguists Stephen Krashen and Tracy Terrell in their book The Natural Approach assert: “The ability to acquire does not disappear at puberty nor is it seriously damaged; rather, the necessary input is often blocked and therefore is less available for acquisition.”
The Natural Approach, developed by Krashen and Terrell, simulates the way you acquired your native language:
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You acquire your target language through comprehensible input—language appropriate to your level.
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You learn grammar rules that are helpful for understanding and communicating, and learn them in a way that you can recall quickly so that you don’t have to stop speaking to think about them, thus improving your fluency.
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You have fun with the language, and your teacher aims to lower your anxiety, including by not pressuring you to start speaking. You speak when you’re ready and as much as you’re ready for. Your teacher builds your confidence, which empowers you to interact with native speakers, thus acquiring more input, becoming more fluent, and creating a positive feedback loop.
“Language is best taught when it is being used to transmit messages, not when it is explicitly taught for conscious learning.” – Stephen Krashen & Tracy Terrell, The Natural Approach
