Based on the exponential intervening variable, a new two-point approximation method is presented. This introduces the shifting level into each exponential intervening variable to avoid the lack of def inition of the conventional exponential intervening variables due to zero-or negative-valued design variables. Then a new quadratic approximation whose Hessian matrix has only diagonal elements of different values is proposed in terms of these intervening variables. These diagonal elements are determined in a closed form that corrects the typical error in the approximate gradient of the TANA series due to the lack of definition of exponential type intervening variables and their incomplete second-order terms. Also, a correction coefficient is multiplied to the pre-determined quadratic term to match the value of approximate function with that of the previous point. Finally, in order to show the numerical performance of the proposed method, a sequential approximate optimizer is developed and applied to solve six typical design problems. These optimization results are compared with those of TANA-3. These comparisons show that the proposed method gives more efficient and reliable results than TANA-3.