What informs us?

I was speaking with a man who taught Spanish in a high school not long ago.  As we talked about his job, he spoke of the "Natural" method for learning language.  It's not a new method.  It's been around for a great number of years.  In fact, it may be the original "method" assuming the word means a systematic order by which to learn something.  The thinking is that babies have to go from 0-60 in a quarter mile.  Since many babies begin speaking by around 9 months and continue learning language at a very rapid pace until around 5, then the stages through which they pass in piecing together language must be the proper sequence for all learners to acquire a language.

I can't believe the method is still around.  I thought it had been reasoned that the onset of reading changes the language dynamic.  Most 8-year-olds can read, so that would preclude the "natural" method from being followed for people 8 and above.  Puberty also changes things.  Cognition, especially how thought is organized, is fundamentally different after puberty than before.  That would certainly prevent the "natural' method from being followed by teens and those older.

But, here I was in the summer of 2012 talking with someone who had been presented the "natural" method and had accepted its premise.  I thought that maybe someone had reworked the idea and used an old name for a new method based on current research.  But, alas, this was not the case.  Wherever he got the notion that the way young children learn a language is the correct way to learn a language should be the last place ever to offer this method as viable.  Children learn their first words as a result of a caretaker modeling the language.  Nowhere in the public schools is this modeled no matter what the grade level, particularly not high school.  Children go through an identifiable two-word utterance stage.  Teenagers and above don't even come close to thinking in these terms.  Children experiment with sounds for the nine months they are in waiting for language to spring forth from their mouths.  That is not the case for older learners. 

Brain studies alone over the last 10 years obliterate the "natural method."  There are two periods of time when the brain prunes its organization of connections, one at around 10 months, one at around 14 years.  After each of the "prunings" the brain advances in its organizational capacity and structure.  There is no way a person after the prunings could return to the stages of a previous organization after it takes place.  And after the first organizational restructuring, the brain learns according to exposure to a child's environment and internal impressions such as interest, motivation, personality, and utility.  By age six, children are set on a learning track unique to themselves.  By age 10 the corpus callosum thins and allows more nerve endings to develop to connect the two hemispheres of the brain.  Language learning is totally different after this stage than before.

I could go on.  The idea is obvious.  The "natural" method has no basis for modern language learning because it has no truth in its learning principles.  This is also a good corollary for life.  Basing one's lifestyle and habits on some notion that life should be lived according to principles we learned as children or as teenagers (even young adults) is probably flawed.  Just as the best method for language learning is probably the one that pays closest attention to the state-of-the-art research, the best way to live life is to do so according to our latest wisdom based on experience and knowledge of our own personality in the situations we have encountered.  Then, we won't be trapped by youthful ideas that go awry in the face of true situations, teachings that were supposed to guide us through childhood but that were never intended for adulthood, or missteps that cost us in time, energy, money, and love along our journey's way.