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Not Studying Grammar | ||
Tags: Natural method | Grammar | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| aokoye Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5539 days ago 235 posts - 453 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, Norwegian, Japanese | Message 33 of 89 13 August 2013 at 10:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The problem with not learning grammar with one of the reasons being that "children
don't learn grammar" are numerous. First - children generally learn grammar at school. It may not be explicit, they may not remember that they did so when they are older, but generally they learn grammar. Second, it is seemingly not uncommon for children who speak a language that they don't learn in school (say they speak Mandarin with their family at home) to not speak it at the same level as someone who speaks the language and also learned it in school (ie they went to a school where the primary language of instruction was Mandarin). Thirdly, children who speak their first language but aren't school-aged tend to make a ton of mistakes. My girlfriend has two kids, a 7 year old and a 5 year old. The 5 year old will be going into kindergarten in the fall and was in pre-school last year and the 7 year old is going into second grade and has some learning disabilities (though this is only relevant because he's behind grade level in reading, among other subjects). Both of them, despite being native English speakers, make a loads of grammar mistakes because they haven't formally learned them. Even seemingly simple things like simple-past tend to elude them (though they are better at it when they using regular verbs vs. irregular which isn't surprising). From my understanding this isn't terribly unusual and leads to my point. I don't want to speak, read, or write like a child who hasn't gone to school. I think when people talk about "learning a language like a child would" or without grammar they are often being overly simplistic and not taking into account that, in reality, they aren't going to be doing that unless they are themselves, a child who is in a second/foreign language class in a K-12 school (or whichever grade your school district ends at) whose primary language of instruction is the second/foreign language (we all know that most of the time people here aren't in that situation). 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4826 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 34 of 89 13 August 2013 at 10:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
Don't be shy: Make it clickable: I live only in the present One thing I might add: perhaps the most useful thing one can get from a native speaker (as well as implicit, although not explicit grammar help) is pronunciation help. He or she may not know the difference between the pluperfect subjunctive and the past anterior, but she or he will certainly be an expert in the pronunciation of her or his own dialect / sociolect. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5205 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 35 of 89 14 August 2013 at 10:36am | IP Logged | |||||
Not in my experience. Pronunciation seems to be similar to grammar in this respect: native speakers are obviously good at it, but generally aren't capable of explaining the technicalities of it to a learner unless they've done a lot of explicit study of it themselves. Even most teachers don't teach pronunciation properly, if at all. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5007 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 36 of 89 14 August 2013 at 12:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
Noone here ever said otherwise. I am just convinced that learning grammar right away can make the path much shorter, especially during the A1-B2 part of it. Later, it's more about exceptions, less known pieces, vocabulary, idioms, details, context and so on. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| I'm With Stupid Senior Member Vietnam Joined 4171 days ago 165 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Vietnamese | Message 37 of 89 14 August 2013 at 5:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
I agree with your general point, but it's worth pointing out that a child who never attends school will still grow up to be a fluent speaker of the language. School teachers grammar for the purposes of reading and writing, not speaking or listening. Plenty of people who don't attend school can't read or write, but they can all speak fluently (with the exception of a few very unusual cases). I would say that the explicit learning of grammar rules doesn't actually help you internalise them in any way, but from a self-learning perspective, it does show you what you've got to try and internalise and could make you a more efficient learner. From the point of view of practice, it's important to have practice where the grammar is fundamental to meaningful communication. A good teacher should be able to design a task where accurate use of grammar (or pronunciation, or whatever) is fundamental to communication (i.e. if you get the wrong grammar point, it causes a breakdown in meaning). Because let's face it, most of the time, this isn't the case, and so it's very easy to get stuck with an inaccurate grammar structure if it never (or rarely) actually impacts on your ability to communicate. And to be fair, plenty of people are happy with a level where it's almost always right if not native-level accurate. Edited by I'm With Stupid on 14 August 2013 at 5:47pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4531 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 38 of 89 14 August 2013 at 6:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
But it all depends on what you want to achieve first. I don't have a strong interest in learning to speak at this point. I do have a strong interest in learning to read and being able to understand spoken speech. I am very happy after a year to be able to pick up a book and just read it without a dictionary, or go to the cinema and watch a film without subtitles. What amazes me -- especially given the emphasis on grammar learning in language schools -- is that I do all this without ANY explicit grammar learning and without having done any grammar drills. I really doubt that learning explicit grammar rules earlier would have made any difference to my reading/listening speed/comprehension up to this point. Edited by patrickwilken on 14 August 2013 at 6:54pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4826 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 39 of 89 15 August 2013 at 12:54am | IP Logged | |||||
No, of course they can't tell you how to pronounce it. They probably don't even know how they pronounce it. But they are a living speech sample for you to imitate. That's all I meant. And that's good enough I think. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| aokoye Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5539 days ago 235 posts - 453 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, Norwegian, Japanese | Message 40 of 89 15 August 2013 at 4:19am | IP Logged | |||||
I agree with you there. A five year old who speaks X language extensively every day is still fluent even if they can't read or write. The same goes for an adult who can't read. They aren't a "fluent reader" (I'm using the word in an educational context, not a primarily linguistic one), but they are a fluent speaker. I feel like when we talk about fluency, ie. "I want to be fluent in Spanish", we need to ask ourselves and others what exactly we mean. Yes there are different levels of proficiency as defined by different organizations but I think that proficiency is different than fluency (though even proficiency is a bit open ended). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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