Video summary
The video introduces the "Natural Method," also known as the Direct or Benson Method, which the speaker argues is the most effective way to learn a language despite being largely ignored by modern applications like Duolingo and Rosetta Stone after their initial units. This approach has been successfully utilized for over a century through specific textbooks that teach learners exclusively within the target language from day one, avoiding reliance on translation or native tongue explanations. The speaker highlights that while contemporary apps often rely on gamification, AI-generated content that is too complex for beginners, or isolated sentences like "the bear riding a bicycle," these older methods focus on building vocabulary and grammar piece by piece in contexts where the language would actually be used in real life.
A primary example provided is the 1932 book *Universal Esperanto Method* by Dr. Benson, which spans 557 pages and guides students through the entire language without using English until they have mastered it. The learning process begins with the alphabet, pronunciation, and calligraphy before moving into nouns, pronouns, and verbs illustrated with pictures that allow teachers to point out grammatical patterns, such as how all nouns end in 'o'. As the student progresses, the curriculum systematically introduces cases like the accusative, numbers, plurals, articles, and suffixes for creating new words, all while using diagrams and physical demonstrations to explain concepts like location and object relationships without needing translation.
By the middle of the book, learners are reading poems, and by the end, they are engaging with complex topics involving specific fruits, vegetables, animals, and verbs that describe actions using only previously learned vocabulary. This progression ensures that the language teaches itself once a sufficient foundation is laid, effectively eliminating the need for constant translation and allowing students to think directly in the new language. The speaker notes that while having a teacher to clarify misconceptions is ideal, the method is robust enough that even self-study can yield results, though pronunciation errors are more likely without guidance.
The conclusion emphasizes that we have essentially reinvented the wheel by creating expensive apps and technologies when effective resources already existed in the 1930s. These old books represent a time when educators understood how to teach languages efficiently before the rise of modern science-backed claims about comprehensible input, proving that the core principles remain valid today. The speaker encourages viewers to explore similar direct method books for other languages, such as *Familia Romana* for Latin or resources for Chinese and Japanese from the same era, suggesting that digitizing these texts with modern graphics could create perfect learning tools that finally implement this underrated, time-tested methodology.
Read the full video transcript
What's up, grinders? Welcome back to the
channel. So, today I saw a post in my
Discord from Vald, the nature method of
the '50s. Almost said the natural, but
here it literally says the nature
method. Now, as soon as I saw the
thumbnail, I knew exactly what method
they were talking about. Now, this is
not going to be a react to that video.
She's got her own video, you guys can go
and watch it if you want. I actually
want to talk about this method. I've
spoken about it a few times on this
channel. I even made a video where I
said this is one of the most underrated
methods out there for learning a
language. And as you can see, this
person right here actually commented, "I
tried a bit of the natural method or
direct method, which is what I call it,
uh for Italian just for shits and
giggles after Evil Dean talked about it
in one of his videos, and I was
intrigued. It seems to work quite well."
Now, I find it fascinating that in a lot
of ways, cuz I've taught using a lot of
different methods over the years, taught
Esperanto, okay,
that this is by far, in my experience,
if you have a teacher who's able to
follow it and actually do it, and you
have the resources, in fact, the
resources is the hardest part. If you
have the resources, this is by far the
best method to learn a language. Like, I
can't think of any other way that's
better than learning using this method.
Now, you might be thinking that's a
that's a high ask claim, okay. I'm going
to show you how this works in a second
because there has been books published
using this method, the natural method,
the direct method, the Benson method,
whatever you want to call it, okay, for
over 100-plus years now. And these books
all came out before everyone started
talking about CI and I plus one
comprehensible input, and the only way
to learn is like people kind of already
knew about how to teach a language in
the most effective way possible long
before anyone brought the science out
to, you know, to back up those claims,
okay. And the crazy thing to me is that
this method works so well, and yet every
modern app out there, almost,
in a lot of ways, doesn't implement
this. In fact, Rosetta Stone kind of
implements this method, but they do it
poorly past the first unit when I from
what I remember of Chinese, okay? But
pretty much no one else out there
implements this. Like Duolingo doesn't
do this. They try to teach you like
stupid [ __ ] funny little stories or
whatever. Like funny little things you
can say, you know, the bear is riding
the bicycle. [ __ ] you're never going to
say in real life. Stuff you're never
actually going to use. Or people try to
get you to just memorize a bunch of
sentences. They'll say language islands
and stuff, which, you know, they work,
but this really actually helps you
engrain the language piece by piece over
time and actively use it from day one
and get away from your natural language,
your native language, as fast as
possible. So, as you can see here in the
cover, she's showing an example of this
book. And this is how all those books
looked back then. But I'm going to show
you the books that I used to actually
teach myself Esperanto beyond a couple
of websites. Now, one of the websites I
spoke about, which actually introduced
me to learning Esperanto, was called
lernu.net. I started on this website. I
did not stay there. I actually
discovered two books, okay? The first
one is Esperanto by direct method, and
this book actually played a massive part
in how I taught Esperanto and then later
English for a number of years, okay?
Straight away from day one, you can put
the you can get each student have this
book, put it down on the table, okay?
And you just start working through it.
And you don't have to resort to English.
Now, this specific book, Esperanto by
direct method, does introduce English a
tiny bit. He usually just gives it
English like translations for words when
the first time you see them. That's
pretty much it. And I think it actually
works quite nicely. It's good enough to
get rid of any ambiguity. But the direct
method going hardcore is this book right
here. Look at this. This was published
in 1932.
Universal Esperanto method by Dr.
Benson, okay? And as you can see,
straight up the whole cover,
everything's directly in Esperanto. Now,
the best way you're meant to do these
books, and I want you to pay attention,
557
pages, okay? Now, obviously, this is not
in print anymore, but if you wanted to
print this out and teach Esperanto, you
could get someone up to a very high
level if they work through this entire
book with you. Now, obviously, they're
going to be speaking a little bit of an
outdated version of Esperanto, and
they'd lack a ton of modern vocab, but
you could get them to a pretty good damn
level in this language, okay? So, pretty
much how it works is like this. The
teacher will have this book there with a
student, okay? Obviously, it's better if
it's one one student, one teacher, but
you could do it with a class, okay? And
straight up, you get the alphabet right
there. Obviously, they teach the sounds,
even calligraphy back then because, you
know, calligraphy was important, and
then straight up you start with some
exercise practicing with uh the accent,
okay? Now, once you get past that,
you move into where the actual book
starts. Now, here you've got a uh
Antaŭparolo, that's like a foreword from
the author. You're not going to be able
to read this on day one. This is kind of
something you can come back to when
you're at the end of the book and feel
the success of what you've done because
you can finally read this whole thing,
okay? Now, where you actually start is
on the right-hand side here. And as you
can see, it looks kind of messy, but a
teacher would know how to step through
each part and show you and kind of lead
you along the path, and everything
builds on top of everything else, okay?
So, you would literally start over here
with a bunch of nouns. And the teacher
would point out, "Hey, have you noticed
all the nouns just ended in O, okay?"
So, that's straight up. Then you get
some pronouns, and you got a picture.
This is mi, I. This is vi, you, okay?
And this is li, he, okay? So, it's he
can The teacher would do that while
reading the book. You'd look, you'd go,
"Oh, yep, I get it." Notice Now, if I
move forward, I can actually work
through each part without using English.
So, up here, if we zoom in on this
picture, okay? So,
obviously, this is not the greatest uh
Here, you can see what's this person
doing? Manĝas.
Manĝas, and then trinkas.
And then skribas, skribas. And you just
work through piece by piece like this.
And now we introduce the pronouns while
doing the verbs, okay? And then
obviously, you've got the guy pointing
here saying that one is drinking, one is
eating. We work through some more verbs.
We move down here. We get a couple of
more nouns. We start putting together
some pronouns with some nouns. Let me
just zoom out a little bit.
Then we move to the next page.
Okay? You get introduced to the word
this thing. You get introduced to the
accusative, okay? And how that works.
And it literally gives you an example of
where the end for the accusative goes
and how it works. Then you move through
the numbers, okay? Over here, you get
some more numbers, which leads into the
plurals,
uh which leads into the article. Now,
you get some more verbs, and those verbs
being turned into nouns by using a
suffix right here, okay? The female
suffix, the thing suffix, the opposite
suffix. Now, you get introduced to the
word what, okay? Or in English, you
would Cuz in English, you just say what.
It doesn't matter if it's in the um
uh So, what's the what's the name of it?
Uh forget it. So, it doesn't matter if
it's in the uh normative or the
accusative case, it's the same word,
okay? But like for example, you'd have
who and whom. And in Esperanto, it has
the same type of distinction, okay? Now,
you get location of object with actual
diagrams. Keep moving forward. And the
teacher can actually be working through
all of these with literal demonstrations
while going through the book, showing
you location of object being placed. And
you need to try and understand this as
you work through. Little bit by little
bit, you work through the whole thing.
Obviously, if you have a teacher, this
is less
it's less like mind [ __ ] but even if
you didn't, you could kind of work your
way through this by yourself, but
obviously not recommended because you
probably mess up pronunciation and
stuff. And it keeps just doing this over
and over and over introducing piece by
piece, building on top of the last thing
all the way through 557 pages, okay. By
the middle of this book, I don't even
know where this is taking us. Okay, by
the middle of this book you're literally
reading out poems, okay. By the back end
of this book here, you're working
through what looks like different types
of fruits, vegetables,
um you've got very specific types of
verbs.
Uh you've got certain types of animals.
Some of these animals I don't even
freaking know, okay. Move further into
the back of the book and here it's like
so it's got a verb and it's describing
that verb using verbs that you already
know. So, now it's using the language to
teach the language, which is what I talk
about with direct method, okay. So, this
here
in a lot of ways shows that we kind of
already figured out the best way to
teach languages over a hundred plus
years ago. Like we had the books. Like
these are [ __ ] amazing resources and
they exist in many different languages
out there. Like we already knew what was
the best method, okay. And for some
reason as time progressed, we then tried
to like overthink, gamify, whatever it
is, but we come out with all these like
fancy apps and stuff. For example, you
get a bunch of AI apps. They're good in
a lot of ways, okay, for practice, but
you can't learn from the start from
literally from zero with them because
the AI will always talk in a language
that's too complex for you. Or like
Duolingo, which just teaches you run a
random bunch of sentences like the
bear's riding a bicycle. Like when in
the [ __ ] are you ever going to use that?
But if you come back into the like the
the start of this book, okay, like you
jump way back here. Right here we're
getting a bunch of like, you know,
actual nouns that you'd be using back
then and this is introducing have, the
verb to have. So, he's like he's like
saying, "He has uh his hat." And then he
has his own hat. Like it's introducing
the Esperanto
uh does, okay. Uh this is the reflexive
pronoun. I'm always a little bit happy
when people talk about this because this
method is totally underrated, and these
books do exist for the vast majority of
European languages. And if you're in the
Latin community, you know about these
ones. Like um people in the Latin
community always talk about Familia
Romana. How how amazing it is for
teaching Latin. And here you've got
[ __ ] Esperanto, okay? A language with
like
does not have the prestige of Latin or
French or any of these other ones. 557
pages walking you through the entire
language. So, what I I kind of want to
hear about now is down in the comments
section, guys. If you know about these
types of books for any language at all,
let me know down there. Give some links
to online freaking maybe even
archive.org to these because I kind of
want to build up like a little personal
repository. So, if anyone ever asks, I
can say, "Hey, take this." With a
teacher, you could go with a teacher on
iTalki and say, "Let's Let's me and you,
lesson by lesson, walk through this,
okay? Let's just walk through it
together, you and me." I feel like in a
lot of ways, this is the best way to
learn a language, okay? You You've
already dropped your English from day
one. You just start straight up in the
language. And if there is any confusion
at any point, direct method is not like
a a fundamentalist method where you're
not allowed to introduce English, as I
said. I taught Esperanto for many years
using this book right here, and it even
includes some English. Just literally
one-word translations. It's not like
it's hardcore you must only be in the
language, but the method as overall
believes that
the best way to learn is in the
language, directly working with the
language in a context where you would
actually use it, you know, like him
having things and stuff like that. Him
falling over, as it's got like right
here, and all these other ones. Like
this is the suffix for container. And
then once you know enough of the
language via this, you get to the back
end of the book where it starts teaching
more complex concepts through the words
and phrases you already know. Now,
obviously, the best way to do it is to
have a teacher available who can work
through and clear up any like
misconceptions or like confusion you
have along the way. But I do always find
it [ __ ] fascinating that we are
constantly trying to reinvent methods
out there or ideas out there of how to
teach a language using you know, all
this fancy phones and technology we've
got and yet these old books from 1930
have already built out the entire thing
there. It's like it's already all
someone has to do is take this digital
ties it, add some fancy [ __ ]
graphics, and bro, this would be
perfect. And I swear these books exist
for
for so many languages and bizarre
languages. Like this is Esperanto. So,
let me know down the comments section if
you know about this type of book for any
language at all. And you know what? If
anyone knows about it for Chinese or
Japanese or something, bro, let me know.
I would so want to check that out.
Especially if it was from the 1930s.
Could you imagine like trying to pick up
Chinese from a book from the 1930s
teaching Chinese using this method? It'd
be [ __ ] insane. Anyway, that's it. I
just wanted to talk about this a little
bit because I got excited when I saw on
my Discord others talking about it again
and this was my excuse to just bring up
this book. And I'll see you all in the
next video. If you're not there, I will
find you and I will make you go through
all 557
pages of this book.