There have been many attempts to help adult foreign language learners study in a way that reproduces the natural methods that a baby or toddler uses to effortlessly learn their L1, but none of them have been very successful. My belief is that this is because they haven’t taken things far enough. As I am presently kicking my heels in Tokyo, I have therefore decided to set up a school in based on an approach which is very closely modelled on my own daughter’s and young nephews’ progress in English.
Policies of the school “Naturaltastic English” will include:
For the first two years of instruction, students will be limited to a specially devised simplified vocabulary. Terms used will include:
beddy byes
pussy
bunny
doggie
jimjams
oopsie-daisy
wee-wee
poo
tummy
horsey
kitty
ickle
diddums
peekaboo
For example, students will be encouraged to reply to “How was your weekend?” with “Juan go beddy bye eight o’clock”. Referring to themselves by name in this way will also be part of the methodology, with of course the teacher also taking part (“Teacher give Juan homework”)
Functional language will also be simplified. For example, requests will be taught as a basic “point plus grunt and cry until you get what you want” method
There will also be a great emphasis on sounds, e.g. “woof woof” instead of “dog” and “brrm brrm” instead of “car”. This obviously matches with multiple intelligences theory.
Cute mispronunciations will be encouraged
Students will be encouraged to use these simplified and mispronounced expressions in grossly over-exaggerated ways, saying “gog” for all animals for a couple of months and then eventually narrowing it down to just dogs
Students will be encouraged to give themselves a round of applause every time they get something right, and then to run off and show everyone else in the class how clever they are
Our unique combination of simplified reading and listening texts with authenticity will include the use of the classic texts Little Miss Muffet, Little Boy Blue, Three Blind Mice, The Twelve Days of Christmas and Hokey Cokey – all of them tried and tested for literally hundreds of years.
Vocabulary learnt through these sources and usually neglected by other adult courses include:
Tuffet
Curds
Whey
Nightgown
Dame
Haystack
Carving knife
Slumber
Lullaby
Turtle dove
Buckle my shoe
Tumble
Wagging
Mittens
Knave
Contrary
Cockle shells
Malt
Piper
Delve
Toll
Fleece
Twinkle
Prick
Fiddler
Broth
Pease pudding
Platter
Pieman
Stile
Half a pound o’ tuppeny rice
Weasel
Farthings
Peck
As you can see, students should also pick up collocations, such as “Pick a peck of pickled pepper”
With the first year’s supply of homework worksheets, students will be encouraged to scrawl things randomly across the page, totally ignoring the things on it. Homework scribbled on the walls and furniture will also be accepted
Any other factors of truly natural language learning I’m missing from my school’s first batch of pamphlets?
TEFLtastic 
I like this idea.
Can I add teta (any drink but derived from the word bottle) and potty to the vocabulary section?
I would also suggest a kind of TPR element in which the teacher screams “Hot!” at them every time they go near an electric socket.
Maybe some oral exploration – the teacher repeats the name of an object while students stick it in their mouths.
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I hope new words like “boyerina” will be accepted at your school. This is my son’s latest vocabulary invention.
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Don’t forget “Don’t do that”, and for more extreme situations, “You little *.*”. This last one uses the well known gap fill technique.
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My contribution to your corpus, which I freely confess is full of things that are woefully missing in Global for example.
Just stop it. Stop.
Ok, give it to teacher now.
To continue from Evan’s gap fill technique, might I add the following:
What the… happened HERE?
If you do that again, I’m gonna…
As for the “point plus grunt and cry” method I find that with all the countries I visit it’s a fail safe way to get things.
Thanks Alex!
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The teacher will encourage students to say “please” and “thank you” by saying them himself when he hands the students anything or when the students ask for anything via the point and cry method. Students are not expected to reproduce these words until the second year, however.
At the end of each lesson the teacher will stand at the door saying “bye bye” over and over and waving his hand.
The teacher will say everything at least 5 times in a row, preferably while pointing.
The teacher will use an unusually modulated voice, going from high to low but generally using a higher pitch than with other adults.
The teacher will never explicitly correct any utterance a student makes. For beginners he will try to guess what the student is trying to say based on even the smallest babble or grunt. For more advanced students, he may restate the “Jenny scary dog” by repeating “Oh, Jenny is scared of the dog?”, but no explicit correction is ever made.
Teacher will pick up the cuter expressions invented inadvertently by students and use them himself, sometimes long after the students have learned the more standard way to say this. “Huge-mungous”, “boyerina” and “top-side-bottom” are good examples.
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All great suggestions, I’ve passed them straight onto my marketing team.
Also:
Error correction with “no”, “noo”, “nooooooo”, “I said NOOOOOOO”, etc each time they make the same mistake
The teacher explains absolutely everything they are doing as they do it, e.g. “I’m just thinking of a way to elicit ‘nappy'” and “I’m putting you in pairs so that I can look at my lesson plan while you are busy”
The vital word “din-dins”
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Also, the teacher asking endless questions that the students never answer is not seen as a failure, as in most elicitation in East Asia, but as part of the technique:
“Did Julio hurt his little noggin? Did he? Did he? Awwww, isn’t Julio a poor wee thing?”
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The teacher will also remember / take into account / be aware of the fact that she will say “Say ‘Thank you'” about 1 000 times – and no-one will remember the phrase.
However, if she says “f*ck” only once, the word will be remembered and repeated in all and every appropriate and (mostly) inappropriate situations.
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The student wants to do the same exercise again and again until the teacher gets sick of it
The teacher uses lots of praise, until the students start praising themselves
The teachers are convinced that every utterance is some kind of English, but can’t agree on what it would mean and later decide that it was probably just babbling
Students are trained to pick up the natural intonation of English sentences first, starting off with sentences fully of nonsense sounds. The intonation of polite interactions is left until 20 years or so later.
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