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The Nature Method

The nature method textbooks were designed to be read, and if you knew a similar language you were meant to rely on cognates and the pictures to understand the whole textbook. The lessons would gradually introduce new words (around 3000) in context, and new grammar.

I want to share something awesome! A girl tried out the same nature method textbook I did. Her video is short so I recommend just checking it out:

She also linked the nature method resources in her summary, which I will paste below:

Nature Method books (English, French, Italian, German): https://drive.google.com/drive/folder... Similar books for Spanish (for online viewing): https://archive.org/details/pocopocoe... https://archive.org/details/allspanis... / irish_via_the_nature_method Audio (English, French, German, Italian): ‪@freetongue‬ Shoutout to Free Tongue for providing all this free, quality audio! French Nature Method playlist: • Le Français par la Méthode Nature

I read half of Le Francais par la Methode Nature, years ago, and it helped push me to being able to read graded readers I had and then eventually anything I picked up in French. I loved the book. I loved learning to read BY reading in the language immediately, learning a language BY doing stuff in the language immediately. I love learning through context, so I loved the style of these nature method textbooks and wish there were more modern ones being used. Lingua Latina for Latin is the only nature method textbook I'm sure is still being used in some classes.

I ended up finding print copies of the French version, the Italian version, and a similar styled book called the All Spanish Method.

I used the audio of Le Francais par la Methode Nature made by Ayan Academy on youtube, like her, to work on my listening skills a few years after reading the textbook. I still would like to both finish reading and listening to this textbook. I feel it got me to B1 level and then I just kind of jumped into reading other stuff I was interested in, and my reading skills improved but none of my other skills did lol.

If you like the style of the textbook, I really recommend these nature method textbooks. If you use them, using them the way she describes she studied them in her video is probably the best way. I just read and listened, and it helped my passive skills but I definitely want to go back and do the production exercises one day.

Be aware they're OLD textbooks, 70+ years old at this point, so some information and words may be out of date. I partly read the textbook when I first did because I was curious what differences there were in an older textbook, what things they taught differently, how they spoke about history and values, which is why I have a big collection of old textbooks at home. I'm into looking at that kind of stuff.

(I once had a horrifically bad chinese textbook from right in the middle of the simplification of characters, so some were simplified and some weren't, and the textbook only had a whopping 100 words it taught which really upset me... on the other hand I have an amazing Chinese Grammar textbook from 1930 that uses 了 only ever pronounced as 'liao' and only uses nin for you, but it's grammar and hanzi explanations are some of the clearest I've ever read).

Well the nature method textbooks were used most from 1920s - 1960s, and the older ones are often the Direct Method (mislabeled by someone as Nature Method) which involved a lot of dialogues in the target language but were not necessarily designed to be understandable without a teacher. Nature Method textbooks are designed to be understandable without a teacher, with just the context of the textbook and visuals, and assume the student knows a similar language to the target language already (so it assumes students know Spanish or Italian or French or English or German already).

Nature Method textbooks usually have more context and cognates in the beginning chapters. Direct Method textbooks usually have plenty of dialogues, and sometimes plenty of pictures to teach the words, but ultimately assume a teacher is teaching many words and grammar and so grammar is not explained in the context of long form stories like it is in nature method. I like Nature Method more. Direct method is okay, Poco a Poco is an example of a direct method textbook. Le Francais par la Methode Nature is an example of a nature method textbook.

Anyway I love the nature method textbooks, I wish some newer textbooks were designed in a similar way.

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Concept: Chinese by the Nature Method

Today I worked on seeing if a Chinese by the Nature Method type of textbook could be made, I used the English by the Nature Method textbook, and added Hanzi and pinyin. Ideally I would change names, add a younger brother too so that I could use didi, and I would to put a Chinese/English vocabulary list at the end of each chapter for reference. I think this kind of format would emulate The Nature Method textbooks best if: the first time a new word is shown, there is an English translation for the word in the sentence, but then afterward there is no English translation above the word for the rest of the book (you must go to the vocabulary list to check). However, for initial formatting, and to explain some grammar, I decided to just include the English translation for the whole sentence. Maybe I could make the exercise sections have no English translations...

Please tell me thoughts, if you're into the idea of a nature method type textbook for Chinese.

The First (1st) Chapter.

第一章

Dì yī zhāng

(THE) FAMILY

家庭。

Jiātíng.

Mr. Smith.

史密斯先生。

Shǐmìsī xiānshēng.

Mrs. Smith.

史密斯夫人。

Shǐmìsī fūrén.

John.

约翰。

Yuēhàn.

Helen.

海伦。

Hǎilún.

Baby.

婴儿。

Yīng'ér.

#my stuff #chinese by the nature method #what do i even tag this #PROJECT #studying chinese #studyblr #langblr #the nature method #chinese studyblr #chinese langblr

The Nature Method

Information about the old Nature Method institute's textbooks. Note: Lingua Latina is still being published and can be bought from the official publisher. The other nature method textbooks are either out of print (and can be found online if you look), or are being printed by a few companies making them easier to access again (I found a company printing the All Spanish Method since I wanted a print copy badly). This rather long page also mentions some newer books which have come out since for Russian in a nature method like style, which is the first I've heard about: "In addition, we have Marianna Avery’s Сорока (Soroka) children’s books, as well as Stanislav Chernyshov’s Поехали! (Poekhali!) books. There is a new course entitled Дорога в Россию (The Way to Russia) by V.E. Antonova, M.M. Nakhabina, and M.V. Safronova, too. There is also Ignaty Dyakov’s series of books, Рассказ Сенсация (The Story of Sensation), Рассказ Провокация (The Story of Provocation), and Рассказ Канонизация (The Story of Canonisation), to which learners sing praises. Still, though, darn it, I want to find Uncle Oleg’s course!"

A collection of links to several of the nature method and direct method style textbooks. Note: several of these can also be found on archive.org and annas-archive.org. These are not all by the nature method institute. The 'direct method' books are a little bit different, they still use only the target language, but they're often designed with the intention that a teacher will help students understand the meaning of unknown words and the lessons are more dialogue based. Poco a Poco textbook is more 'direct method' styled, compared to say Lingua Latina which is more 'nature method.' Nature method textbooks tend to have more context of what is happening on the page (This is Maria, she is Mary's mom, Mary is the little sister to Sophia, Sophia and Mary are Maria's daughters), more of a connected narrative through each chapter (versus direct method where you see more 'this is a chair' 'this is an elephant' 'this is a rose' 'is this a rose?')

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Tour of Old Language Learning Textbooks

So I find old books fascinating, and I've collected a fair number of old language learning textbooks (from 1800s to 1980s, along with some modern ones).

The Nature Method textbooks teach language in my absolute favorite way of studying, and I wish there were more modern textbooks still teaching in this way (Lingua Latina for Latin is one nature method style textbook still used by some). There are also textbooks in this style found on archive.org and sometimes on youtube for: English, French, Italian, German (incomplete copy found), Latin (as mentioned, multiple volumes, newer versions available for purchase), Greek, and Spanish (Poco a Poco and All Spanish Method part 1 and part 2 are both not written as in-depth in this 'nature method' lesson style, but if you either know a similar language with some cognates like English or French, or have a teacher then they can still be used like the other nature method books), and supposedly there was a Russian version (I've found similarly-made lessons on youtube) but I have not found the old textbook yet. I used the French one to learn most of my basic vocabulary and grammar, and go from reading graded readers to regular novels in French. A warning that some grammar and vocabulary is out of date, and there could be racist undertones in some of the texts, due to the time they were written. I've seen some questionable vocabulary in a couple of them, so just be aware if you use these as a resource of the possibility of those issues.

There is someone who's recently been trying to design a similar 'nature method' learning material for japanese (their first 60ish lessons are edited by a japanese speaker, the later lessons are still being worked on), and I think this person did a fairly good job using emojis for the pictures. A basic understanding of japanese hiragana and katakana is necessary beforehand, along with knowing the language is subject object verb. Unfortunately I think the person has only taught 200-500 words so far, and a material for japanese would probably want to teach 2000-5000 words to get the learner to the point they could try to read other things (which was the official Nature Method's goal - to get learners to B1-B2, at least B1 in speaking and some intermediate level high enough to pick up novels and read to acquire further language).

There's a textbook called Chinese Self-Taught by the Nature Method (NOT actually in the nature method lessons style though) and Chinese Grammar Self Taught by John Darroch, and even though they're from 1930s, the Grammar Self Taught by Darroch is one of my favorite chinese learning books. The book explains radicals and hanzi in a way I found very easy to grasp, and although the grammar and vocabulary has aged (some of it is out of date now) the explanations FOR grammar in the book are very clear and easy to grasp. I've read modern online grammar explanations and like some, understood mostly, but this book's explanations just click well. The book also teaches over 2000 hanzi (I think it might even be 3000 or more - it's in a box right now or I'd check), has a hanzi dictionary in the back (and you can practice searching by strokes), and teaches a bit more vocabulary than that. It's shining point is the grammar explanations, but the clear presentation of hanzi used in those explanations is also nice. Pronunciations for the hanzi are an old system, not the current pinyin system, so if you ever learn from this book then I would recommend knowing common hanzi pinyin already, or at least not trying to learn pronunciations from this book. The hanzi are also traditional, and the biggest initial grammar differences I have seen in the book are le often being written as pronounced 'liao' even when it would be 'le' in most modern sentences, and ni being pronounced as 'nin' far more than it is in modern speech. I purchased a copy of this book years ago on ebay. This book can be found in OpenLibrary, Princeton link: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101067640563&seq=5

Another chinese textbook that's always seemed useful have been the DeFrancis Chinese books, in particular the Beginner Chinese Reader (2 volumes), Intermediate Reader (2 volumes), and Advanced Reader (1 volume). I haven't checked in a while, but recent searches say anecdotally that the Beginner Reader covers 400 hanzi in 1200 combinations (words), Intermediate covers 400, and Advanced covers 400, leaving the learner with 1200 hanzi learned (and 3600 2-hanzi words known, as the books attempt teach a TON of compound words). However some people are saying each book volume contains 400 hanzi taught and 1200 combinations, which would mean 2400 hanzi total taught and 7200 words total. As these books are dense (and I've got them), I'd say they teach closer to the higher amount estimated. I've not completed them, but they are VERY information dense. These books are out of print so buying a physical copy had to be done on abebooks or thriftbooks or ebay, and they often expensive. But there are free pdf copies floating around online if you want to get the digital copy free and browse them. The audio files for the book are also online, from the organization with the rights, so just search 'DeFrancis Beginner Chinese Reader audio files' and you should find them on itunes and the official site for free. These books are extremely dry reading (as some old textbooks are) akin to FSI courses, and they're very repetitive, but they do work and they do suit learners who prefer to learn by reading and reading a LOT to solidify knowledge. You WILL get tons of graded reading practice from the book, pick up tons of words in an organized and structured way, and get reading-review practice built into future chapters so you can simply read a chapter then progress to the next one (instead of constantly needing to review). These books do have some out of date vocabulary, and use traditional characters with only shorter simplified character reading sections at the end. However: if you've learned 1000 characters by now (or intend to) then you know how many simplified and traditional characters overlap, or are the same except for 1 radical being simplified or traditional, and you may be aware that the common hanzi which ARE significantly different in traditional may be worth learning to you if you plan to eventually read both simplified and traditional materials. I buy books from China and Taiwan so learning both is useful to me. (And a fun fact if you're a nerd who explores parallel-text reading options like me: mtlnovels.com is a site to read machine translated webnovels, with the option to display original chinese IN traditional as the only option, and I spent a lot of my first couple years learning chinese using that site to compare Modu by Priest chinese with the MTL and learn new words, since mtl often made mistakes I needed to see the chinese to look up words and get a bit closer to the actual sentences meaning... and the wonderful E Danglars translation of Silent Reading did not exist yet, so I was desperate to read and understand as much of the novel as I could. My point with this anecodote is: you may not realize how useful getting used to both traditional and simplified characters can be - from browsing online sites and not needing to worry, or buying books, or picking shows to watch, texting with people, etc).

For the learners out there who cannot suffer through DeFrancis's dry writing: fair enough, I struggled to as well which is why I never completed the textbooks. The modern Mandarin Companion graded readers are an adequate place for a beginner learner (knowing 50-300 hanzi) to start learning by reading, then you can move on to Sinolingua graded readers (or just get Pleco app and browse graded readers sold through them by unique word count, as Pleco's Reading tools will help you look up words and listen), and then around when you know HSK 4 level vocabulary and grammar (so 1000-1500 hanzi you know, and around that many words) go to Heavenly Path's notion site and browse their beginner recommendations. Around HSK 4 you should be able to start reading easier texts for native speakers, like the 1000-1500 unique words novel recommendations on Heavenly Path's site.

There are some Japanese textbooks made to learn by reading a lot, and by now you may realize I love and prefer to learn by reading. A Japanese Reader: Graded Lessons for Mastering the Written Language (Tuttle Language Library) by Roy Andrew Miller is a beast of an option. Reviews include people mentioning that this book got them to the level of being able to read the news. I am not sure this book has the most extensive vocabulary (compared to what it could have), but it is: intensely informational and condensed to be informational nearly constantly, full of useful information and reading practice, and it does help you improve a LOT. It's not the steady stream of tons of easy material slowly teaching you more words from context that I wish existed more in japanese learning materials (check out the free Tadouku books for that - someone on reddit made 1000 page compilation of many of them in gradually increasing difficulty and it was very useful and enjoyable to read personally, and this site I found recently https://jgrpg-sakura.com/ which has a bit more advanced material and recorded audio and is just a lovely site). But it is a book that prepares you for real reading. I have a personal pet peeve about how some japanese language textbooks teach very little vocabulary or things until you get to intermediate level (I wish each genki volume taught 1000+ words each, instead of the 1700 words total of both volumes... and there's other beginner textbooks that likewise sort of 'slow down' the pace of learning with less material). And so I've found this particular Japanese Reader refreshing for presenting the basics (although you won't have a good time if you start this book as a beginner, it becomes STEEPLY difficult), and also working through all the way to 'functional reading skill of normal japanese texts.' Some people are like me, and have goals of reading as soon as they can, and it's nice when a book that says they'll teach you enough to start reading... actually does.

(I have similar pet peeves with some Chinese books - the college course ones appear to be great and teach 2000 or more words to beginners, but I've seen MANY self-teach chinese books that include only 200-500 words for a beginner... when they are going to need at bare minimum, with much strain and difficulty, 1000 words to even begin to start watching shows and reading very simple webnovels and manhua... or even having simple survival conversations, that's why HSK 4 expects 1200 words known! I think some language teaching companies just think english speakers will give up at the difference in languages, the increase in vocabulary that isn't cognates, and so instead of giving learners all they need to know - and the same amount of information they'd give say a english speaker learning spanish - they instead just design materials that teach less so it doesn't 'feel' like more work. Then the students feel screwed when they finished material labelled 'beginner' just like the spanish learner, only to realize they can do MUCH less and understand much less than the spanish learner who supposedly studied the same level of material - but actually got to study more vocabulary and grammar points. Ignore me... I could go on about my issues with some of the self-learner materials I've found for ages.)

There is also a simpler Japanese Reader textbook, 400 pages each and 2 volumes, that is fairly similar to the DeFrancis chinese reader books in terms of teaching style. I have the pdfs on an old computer, and the hard copy books in a box. I'll need to go look up the author another time (the book title was something very generic like Beginning Japanese and it's 20-30 years old, so newer books show up in searches instead of the books I have). It teaches only 500 kanji per volume, and the first volume mainly goes over how to read hiragana and katakana (and many loan words) with EXTENSIVE practice and repetition. It's designed to make you VERY COMFORTABLE reading japanese and parsing sentences and words, with lots and lots of practice. I'll find what box it's in and post more information on it if anyone is particularly curious for extensive reading practice as a beginner. The print copies sold for 20 dollars a piece when I bought them, and free pdfs can be found online if you search. However: I think if you already have hiragana and katakana grasped at least to a basic degree, the Tadouku free books may be more appealing to you. The Tadouku books are: free, written to be somewhat interesting, use pictures to help you read extensively and look up less, get you used to japanese grammar and sentences, and introduce kanji at a reasonable pace that is easy to get used to.

Finally, Japanese in 30 Hours. Free on archive.org, I also have a print copy. A slim textbook, and an incredibly useful one. Someone also posted the lessons with their own audio recording read through on youtube. What these lessons are: a true basic grammar summary of japanese. This book has some of the usual flaws of japanese lessons made for english speakers: they're entirely in romaji, they include watakushi Wa or X wa as the intro to MOST sentences even though in natural japanese those would often be omitted, the -masu polite form is in most lessons and casual verb forms are only covered in the later lessons, and the distinction between wa and ga seems to not be understood by the author. This book also has some flaws usual of much older textbooks: the grammar is somewhat out of date (arimasen in modern japanese is not used NEARLY as much as this textbook, yoi "good" is now "ii" in modern japanese much more often), and the author has this somewhat racist somewhat touristic somewhat english-centered peculiar way of framing things. I am not sure if at the time it was how an author was supposed to 'make the student entertained' during the lesson, to sell the 'mystique' of learning another language or to try and make another language seem more like english to placate an egotistical learner or what. From a historical standpoint it's interesting to see how differently things were discussed, but from a modern learner perspective it gets in the way and can be frustrating. (I would suspect some other old Japanese textbooks I've found from the late 1800s and 1900-1920s would display similar qualities depending on the authors). The reason this book is useful, despite the romaji only aspect and it's extremely dated way of framing some topics: it truly does tackle covering summarizing basic grammar of VERBS quite well. This books explanation for te-imasu, strings of connected verbs, compound verbs turning into new verb meanings, rareru, sareru, and -shou verb situations, and is still probably the explanation I understand the most when trying to read and understand sentences.

I suspect the modern Tae Kim's Grammar Guide also has good explanations for these, but the explanations are NOT in the beginner section (despite these verb types being SO common in everyday japanese you'll read or hear), and while I like Tae Kim's guide I find the written explanations a bit hard to personally 'get' and usually just rely on the example sentences/translations and compare until I *think* I understand. Like I love that Tae Kim's guide DOES explain difference between wa and ga... and yet I didn't understand his explanation enough to decide when to use wa myself, only that now I grasped the difference between wa 'a topic' (As for students - students in general - I am one) and ga "the thing THAT IS" (THE student - you're looking for specifically - is me). But I still don't know when one would pick to use wa, and why. As for Japanese in Thirty Hours: the rareru and te-imasu explanation really helped me grasp a lot of reading materials where those forms are frequently found. If you do struggle with understanding some verb form explanations, this free book may help you look at the forms in a way you may grasp better. (Or not, everyone is different). The book also has a vocabulary of over 1000 words in the back, and was designed for students to do speaking drills in different sentence patterns, to learn to speak quickly (although in a learner-type way similar to Genki sentences and the 'watashi wa' start). I never learned the vocabulary in the back, and I suspect some of it is out of date while other parts may be useful. Regardless, as it's only romaji, you would likely benefit more from using a hiragana/katakana/kanji resource for vocabulary study.

#japanese resources #chinese resources #langblr #language learning books #the nature method #the natural method #old books