RyanSmallwood wrote:I personally don't think its so necessary to follow the "Nature Method" so strictly, for anyone using it as a basis to develop resources for other languages. I think a lot of these resources are great, but I don't think what makes them great has to do with the "Nature Method" itself, but rather related to the design choices needed to make it work. I've gone on in a bunch of other threads how I think a lot of the standardized coursebook formats aren't as extensive as they need to be to be efficient. Nature Methods tend to work horribly when they're not designed well, so the ones that people like tend to be a lot more extensive and properly graded and for me that's the main reason they work better than other texts. And of course the more time spent meaningfully engaging with the TL the better, so setting the bar of trying to design a course that teaches everything in the target language is better than methods that are overly reliant on explanation with very little TL interaction.
But personally I think its just much easier and quicker to explain some things in NL, and having a translation of dialogs available gives a lot more wiggle room to make them more interesting and usable by learners at different levels. So I personally don't start with Nature methods but prefer to get explanations and use parallel text formats to jump into more interesting content quicker. Then I can draw on Nature Methods after or in parallel when I want to get more exposure and make sure I can understand stuff on its own, because they're well designed and extensive they can be a great place to go. So to me its helpful to have extensive well graded materials that are designed to be as intelligible as possible on first exposure, but it doesn't greatly destroy the effectiveness to also use explanations and translations.
So if people find the template helpful to make extensive comprehensible graded materials for other languages, I say go for it. But if there's something that easier to explain in NL, or if people want to write more interesting dialogs that aren't as perfectly graded providing a translation will probably make it a lot easier to design and can be just as or more effective if its extensive enough.
The main good feature of Nature Method books is not that they are entirely in TL, but for the fact that they almost 1000pages and entirely in TL, they are by far the most comprehensive readers available in single volume. Take Le français par la méthode nature as an example and compare it to some of the most celebrated books out there for learning French, which is, Assimil with ease. Le français par la méthode nature will not online provide you much more input (which is, as the name goes, nautrally comprehensible) but will bring you much more further in your comprehension of French especially if the second book Initiation à la littérature française is studied afterwards.
Tons of input, diligently graded, a story line... It would be unfair to say that Nature Method books are loved only because they are entirely in the TL.
Also, let us not ignore the fact that, Nature Method books being entirely in TL makes them universally available. However, for instance, in order to use Assimil or Linguaphone courses, you either need to know English or French very well.
EDIT: I was wondering if anyone grabbed a physical copy of these books provided by Ayan Academy? They look pretty cool and I suppose they are the only ones providing copies of the sequels.
https://ayanacademy.myshopify.com/produ ... ode-nature
