In many ways, the natural approach is an object lesson in what applied linguistics should not be. For it sought to impose upon teachers, without consultation and without consideration for their existing practices and beliefs, ideas based upon academic research and theorizing. Its view of SLA, moreover, was derived directly from mainstream linguistics research into child first-language acquisition, where the early stages are largely internally driven and impervious to instruction. This research was then assumed to be directly relevant—indeed imperative—to changes in the way languages were taught. In addition, the approach was culturally insensitive:it was developed in the USA and then exported as globally relevant without regard to differing educational traditions or language-learning contexts. It paid no heed, for example, to variations in class size or to concepts of teacher role. Most damning of all, however, is the fact that there search on which it was based is seriously flawed in that instruction does
effect learning and there are variations depending on the language being learned. A cautionary tale indeed.