A two step modified Newton method is considered for obtaining an approximate solution for the nonlinear ill-posed equation F(x)=f when the available data are fδ with ‖f−fδ‖≤δ and the operator F is monotone. The derived error estimate under a general source condition on x0−x^ is of optimal order; here x0 is the initial guess and x^ is the actual solution. The regularization parameter is chosen according to the adaptive method considered by Perverzev and Schock (2005). The computational results provided endorse the reliability and effectiveness of our method.