Reflections on Krashen’s Natural Approach for Second Language Acquisition

The Natural Approach as developed by Stephen Krashen is regarded as radical by many language teachers.The primary reason why he has offended the sensibilities of so many is particularly his de-emphasis on formal learning, and his claim that a focus on input is the necessary and sufficient condition for achieving communicative competence. It is argued, among other things, that this may be due to the fact that though Second Language Acquisition Theory is interdisciplinary, language teaching methodology is dominated by orthodox linguistic theories. It is argued here that, though Krashen’s Natural Approach comes out of a an orthodox linguistic paradigm (generative grammar), it has far reaching implications and lends itself to nonlinguistic perspectives. Furthermore, because of the model of the Natural Approach is so holistic and synthetic, it has become one of the most comprehensive and effective approaches for language teaching: profound in scope, though deceptively simple. Though it can be critiqued on both theoretical and empirical grounds, its essential feature is its essential focus on meaning “( comprehensible input”) as a necessary condition for real acquisition. Despite some shortcomings in theoretical claims, the Natural Approach is the most comprehensive approach which should serve as the touchstone for any and all language teaching methodologies and even second language acquisition theory