The Nature Method Courses

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Re: The Nature Method Courses

Postby daegga » Sun Aug 14, 2022 10:14 am

And maybe give a little 'primer' in English at the front of the book, even if that isn't the true nature method.


The French book has a "resumé" section at the end of most chapters, where grammar points get clarified and additional exercises relating to that. All in the target language. I missed that in the Italian book.
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Re: The Nature Method Courses

Postby RyanSmallwood » Sun Aug 14, 2022 11:03 am

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.
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Re: The Nature Method Courses

Postby polllyglot » Sun Aug 14, 2022 2:07 pm

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
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Re: The Nature Method Courses

Postby chanchy34 » Tue Aug 16, 2022 3:51 am

mokibao wrote:So let's update the recap according to recent developments:

Courses that have been completely digitized: Latin, French, Italian, English, German, Danish

Courses that have been partially digitized: Russian

Courses known to exist: Spanish

Inspired complete courses: Esperanto

Inspired partial courses: Japanese, Ancient Greek, Turkish


galaxyrocker wrote:
aspartamo wrote:German one hasn't been completely digitized


So there are more than 24 lessons in it? I have lesson 1-24. I've been in contact with the person I got them from, but haven't heard anything back from them recently.

Where can I find the digitized German course?
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Re: The Nature Method Courses

Postby lowsocks » Fri Aug 19, 2022 10:03 pm

chanchy34 wrote:
galaxyrocker wrote:
aspartamo wrote:German one hasn't been completely digitized


So there are more than 24 lessons in it? I have lesson 1-24. I've been in contact with the person I got them from, but haven't heard anything back from them recently.

Where can I find the digitized German course?
It might be available here:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/index-for-and-in-63544985

However, it seems you will need to become a patreon supporter to access it. (I have not tried it myself.) You will also need to become a supporter, to access most of the chapter videos. (Only a few are freely and publicly available on youtube).

Also, note some of the comments further down that page. Although they have been able to fix some things, it sounds like chapters 9 to 12 are still difficult to read. (Perhaps Galaxyrocker has a better copy for those particular chapters?)

From what they say, it seems that 36 chapters were all that were ever produced for the German course. Now, according to their shopify page for the printed copies, the German course is only 253 pages. Compare this with the English course (742 pages), French (1124 pages), and Italian (765 pages). In comparison, it looks like German might be around one third of a full course. It strikes me that the German course was probably never completed, to the point where it would cover all the basic grammar of the language.

So, much as I would like to have a complete, full Nature Method course for German (and many other languages too), my feeling is that this particular course may not be worth chasing after. But admittedly, I have not been able to examine the books myself. I would be interested to hear the opinions of others.
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Re: The Nature Method Courses

Postby anitarrc » Sat Aug 20, 2022 10:43 am

My respect to Anton Dzum for the Russian Course. Very kind to do this.

French for foreigners in France works a bit like that, unfortunately their English teaching is very different, bordering on useless.
I am really impressed, my Mexican Spanish prof 42 years ago did just that with added hand drawn material.

I absorbed most of my knowledge through the nature method -either living in the country, having a partner who was lazy (Brit) or during the only courses ever took (Spanish at a university and Serbian from MIL very long ago). To my compete surprise, I still understand more Serbian than I thought.
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Re: The Nature Method Courses

Postby galaxyrocker » Sun Aug 21, 2022 7:18 pm

PeterMollenburg wrote:What this thread lacks is a good description on what exactly the Nature Method is. Is it similar to any other course? How far does it take the learner? How are the lessons structured? Is it grammar heavy? Are there drills, exercises, conversations, vocabulary lists etc? Is it immersion-based?


See Prof. Arguelle's new video if you're still confused. Just released a video about it.
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Re: The Nature Method Courses

Postby PeterMollenburg » Mon Aug 22, 2022 1:17 am

galaxyrocker wrote:
PeterMollenburg wrote:What this thread lacks is a good description on what exactly the Nature Method is. Is it similar to any other course? How far does it take the learner? How are the lessons structured? Is it grammar heavy? Are there drills, exercises, conversations, vocabulary lists etc? Is it immersion-based?


See Prof. Arguelle's new video if you're still confused. Just released a video about it.


Cheers ;)
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Re: The Nature Method Courses

Postby lowsocks » Mon Aug 22, 2022 2:05 am

After watching the video, it is not clear, to me at least, how these courses were meant to be used. Is one meant to puzzle out the grammar on one's own? That might be intriguing for some. Rather like a field linguist, documenting a previously unknown language, who must work with monolingual native speakers. But I am not sure every learner is ready for such a task.

On the other hand, if there are grammars and other aids available as part of the course (which seems to be the case for Lingua Latina), then how is the course so very different from some traditional courses, where the lessons are centered around a graded set of texts?
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Re: The Nature Method Courses

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Mon Aug 22, 2022 9:02 am

lowsocks wrote:After watching the video, it is not clear, to me at least, how these courses were meant to be used. Is one meant to puzzle out the grammar on one's own? That might be intriguing for some. Rather like a field linguist, documenting a previously unknown language, who must work with monolingual native speakers. But I am not sure every learner is ready for such a task.


I studied Italian with L'italiano secondo il metodo natura three years ago and found the method very straightforward. I wasn't a complete beginner, Italian is also related to other languages I know - and it's not only Indo-European but also Western European, and perhaps it's even considered a rather easy language.
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