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Not Studying Grammar | ||
Tags: Natural method | Grammar | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 73 of 89 21 August 2013 at 2:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Depends on how old children, how smart and how motivated. There are already some who understood they need to take things into their own hands. Some buy a ready made grammar book, others try to find some system in the mess their teacher created by themselves. There are some whose parents can and are willing to pay for better extra classes out of the school. And there is the majority that just gives up.
I agree that most troubles with the grammar come from it being taught wrong. Small pieces taken out of the context and grammar system (so common in English or German courses). The order of things being taught dependent on the "communicative" approach doesn't as well always go from the easier things to the more complicated (this is especially true for French). And especially teaching the nonsense approach that grammar is the boring evil separated from the real language. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4908 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 74 of 89 23 August 2013 at 8:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I was browsing around some old threads, and rediscovered a thread with an article about lessons from 50 years of teaching FSI.
This quote from the article is quite relevant to this discussion:
Taking this slightly further, let's look at an example of a student who is trying to read a simple book. If the student hasn't learned verb endings and case endings, then they will be hung up on those basic structures as they try to read the text. If they have learned these basic things, then they will instead be wondering about the more complicated aspects of grammar such as sentence structure much sooner. In other words, a little bit of work early on with basic and regular structures will enable the student to learn the deeper structures (which may not be able to be learnt as explicit rules) by extensive and intensive exposure. For your edification, the link to the article is http://www.geolanguage.org/archives/sla/gurt_1999_07.pdf. The link to the thread is http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=23446&PN=0&TPN=1. Edited by Jeffers on 23 August 2013 at 8:40pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| JC_Identity Triglot Groupie Sweden thelawofidentity.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4120 days ago 53 posts - 108 votes Speaks: Swedish, Serbo-Croatian*, English | Message 75 of 89 23 August 2013 at 10:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
I would like to say that I admire every person that has the courage to think for himself/herself, and I see it here in you. You have from your own observations started to question established "rules". I would like to give you the best advice an independent thinker can get: do not ever more accept anything you hear from others on faith, think for yourself, question everything. I think you are already showing that you are on to something big here. Just remember that whatever you do in any type of learning, you need comprehensive input. But of course properly you should not accept this on faith either, but try to prove it to yourself. Anyway I wish you good luck in your language endeavors! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5297 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 76 of 89 23 August 2013 at 11:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
Maybe I am missing something, but he proposes "Learn like a child!" and wants to read some comic books. Let's hope his independent thinking will lead to even bigger astonishing revolutions! Edited by lingoleng on 23 August 2013 at 11:26pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4827 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 77 of 89 23 August 2013 at 11:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
I like Krashen's big idea, although I should be honest and say that it tended to confirm some of my preconceived notions, so perhaps I'm not being as intellectually open-minded as I should be. I can remember learning some English grammar in the upper primary school years (8 to 11 for us), and I think I got the gist of it, and I wonder if this was because by then I was already an extensive reader (although I'd not been particularly quick to start reading). I sometimes wish I had been an even more extensive reader then (reading from a wider range), and wonder if it would have improved my intellectual development even more? I feel I excelled in primary school, but burned out or underachieved in secondary school, and maybe the foundation wasn't quite enough. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4827 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 78 of 89 23 August 2013 at 11:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
Your experiment sounds very interesting, and I hope you are able to document your experiences with it in a log here, or somewhere we can link to. I do not know if it will work, but I think you will be able to see quite quickly if you are making progress, and hopefully that will encourage you. As you know of course, children receive a massive amount of input and correction over many years, and it's that you'd have to reproduce. The input is probably doable. I don't know about the correction, unless you have friendly native speakers on hand. One problem might be that you might get sick of reading children's books after a while, and before you'd absorbed the necessary amount of input. If you can get over that hurdle, you might be fine. After they get to a certain point, I think even conventional learners stop focusing on grammar to the extent that they studied it in the beginning. Maybe just the odd reference to a grammar book or an online source. So after a while, your use of input won't look much different to a lot of advanced learners here. You may lack the grammatical knowledge to talk about the language the way that they can, but what does that matter if you can read, write, speak and understand the language itself. So good luck, and please report back now and again. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| JC_Identity Triglot Groupie Sweden thelawofidentity.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4120 days ago 53 posts - 108 votes Speaks: Swedish, Serbo-Croatian*, English | Message 79 of 89 24 August 2013 at 9:57am | IP Logged | |||||
Why don't you let him think for himself. Reading comic books is great, you ensure comprehensive input by having the pictures from which you can infer meaning. What I referred to in the quote there was his/her realization that studying grammar does not help much to speak the language. Don't take from me, read what Kato Lomb did. Here he/she has realized for him-/herself that the grammar-first approach is flawed, that is big! Now lets not impose our own approaches here but let him/her continue the chain of thought. By thinking independently and questioning for yourself, you will find the correct principle in the end, after all there is only on reality, A is A. I say this because I see some imposing here, instead of honestly presenting one's ideas objectively and always explaining the reason behind why one has chosen to follow a particular set of ideas. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5297 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 80 of 89 24 August 2013 at 1:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
Oh my god, Aristotle, the law of identity, A is A, the real nature of identity! What an amazing thinker you are. A is A, that solves all our problems, thank you! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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