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Not Studying Grammar | ||
Tags: Natural method | Grammar | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4292 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 41 of 89 15 August 2013 at 5:37am | IP Logged | |||||
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I remember in primary school, not very well, but generally, I learnt very specifically
grammar everyday, with corresponding terminology. I remember doing grammar exercises every week as homework assignments, and even as a child I learnt about subordinating clauses, prepositional phrases, and the quite frequent irregular past participles of English (i.e., infinitive: win, past participle: won and not winned), irregular contractions (won't for "will not" and not "willn't". I still remember in school learning the types of sentences: declarative, interrogative, imperative, etc. Grammar drills were done everyday, both in speech and writing in class. I like this approach for foreign languages as well, so perhaps it depends on which method the learner prefers. But for me at least, this heavy emphasis on grammar accelerates my learning in foreign languages more than if I do not do it. I notice that in written English, for example, I see "you're" for the possessive adjective "your", as well as "who" for the direct object pronoun (or accusative case) "whom". These mistakes I Cannot remember ever making, since there was one lesson in grammar class (I actually had a class for grammar everyday), where the entire topic for the day was to never use "who" as a direct object pronoun for "whom", since "who" is an interrogative subject pronoun. Thus "For who is this book?" sounds very awkward to me. I understand that "you're" and "your" sound similar, but "who" and "whom" do not, so this mistake can be heard in speech, as well as in writing. So whilst someone can definitely be fluent in the language without heavy grammar, I am not sure if this nuance "who" for "whom", and its equivalents in foreign languages, can be avoided without grammar lessons. However, if one wants to aciheve C2, probably they do not want to use "who" for "whom" or other mistakes like this in other languages (e.g. "ils" for "eux" after a preposition in French, or "met ik" instead of "met mij" in Dutch). Edited by 1e4e6 on 15 August 2013 at 6:16am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5011 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 42 of 89 15 August 2013 at 12:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
As I already wrote (either here or in another recent thread), there are many ways to learn grammar. And you are obviously learning great from tons of input. Learning grammar doesn't mean you have to explicitly learn rules and do the drills. I never said so. And it is much easier to learn to understand both grammar and vocab passively in a film or a book than to use them actively. As long as you are happy with your skills, good for you. But many people just get surprised that their active skills aren't as good as the passive ones and usually because of the grammar. They understand but have got neither the classical grammar grounding nor the needed amount of input. Another thing, I think I'm With Stupid mentioned: I disagree that school grammar in your native language only teaches you to write correctly. Spoken language is being cultivated too, both in direct and less obvious ways. There is, more or less depending on your teacher, focus on using correct language. There are spoken assignments, presentations before others, oral examinations and so on. Of course the school doesn't make natives fluent, they already are. But it does make them sound like educated people and to use both writen and spoken language proficiently. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Keilan Senior Member Canada Joined 5088 days ago 125 posts - 241 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 43 of 89 17 August 2013 at 1:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
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There are a lot of people who try learning like this, and while I believe it is possible to just kind of "get a feel" for the language, rather than learn the grammar formally, to me it seems like a colossal waste of resources. I have an adult brain, capable of understanding complex patterns and systems, and I see no reason to refuse to use it. I had a basic understanding of the Russian case system after an hour of having it explained to me (I'm far from perfect mind you, but when I am corrected, I understand my mistakes), where as I think you would have to throw sentences at me for months before I figured it out just from exposure.
Basically, exposure to native materials is fantastic and should be taken advantage of... but grammar is important too, and studying it formally can save a lot of time and frustration. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4535 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 44 of 89 17 August 2013 at 2:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
It's a waste of resources only if there are better ways of doing things. I am not convinced that knowledge of explicit grammar rules has much to do with grammar output in the form of speech/writing by the brain. My guess is explicit knowledge for grammar rules falls in the same part of the brain as declarative knowledge of lots of of other things. Questions like "who is the current US president?" or "What's in the capital of Russia?" seem to be exactly the same kind of questions as "In German what is the correct declination for a adjective preceding a masculine noun in the accusative case after a definite article?". Even though I know lots of explicit grammar rules in German, I can't use them on the fly to produce correct speech, certainly not at a normal conversational pace (Krashan mentions studies showing speech rate is approx. 30% slower when people use explicit rules, which is sufficient to make normal conversation unworkable - and strongly suggests that these rules are not being used for language production, but post-production for language monitoring). Certainly native speakers also can't report grammar rules for own languages, unless they have learnt them at school. For myself I want to get to C2 as fast as possible. It's a truism that we only have so many hours in the say to study. I would much prefer to get to a point where I am now, where I am able to comfortably read say 600k words per month first, then worry about grammar rules I haven't learnt explicitly later. If your aim is to get to B1/B2 then perhaps learning explicit grammar rules early, and doing lots of drills earlier is better, but I am not convinced that it will get you to C2 any faster. I suspect it will be less efficient in the long-run because you'll load yourself up with lots of grammar study early that may not be needed at all later and so waste a lot of time before you get to a point where you can read efficiently. The problem with this discussion is that there are very few studies to support either side. I can certainly point to people who achieved real fluency in a few years by means of massive input. These same people say that learning lots of grammar is not helpful. Since you mention Russian: I work with a German journalist who works in Central Asia who learnt Russian by learning a 1000 or so words by flash cards and then reading and speaking lots of Russian. I have been told by Russian native speakers that his Russian is strong C2. His advice was also not to worry too much about explicitly learning grammar. I know there are lots of others who swear by grammar rules as an essential part of the process. I would find it more convincing if the proponents of learning explicit grammar early as a means of more efficiently learning a language could point to people who learnt significantly faster than those who forgo formal grammar study. Edited by patrickwilken on 17 August 2013 at 3:10pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5011 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 45 of 89 17 August 2013 at 6:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Patrick, we obviously disagree on what is explicit knowledge of grammar.
Your example is of course true and there are such people. But here is what I mean by explicit and helpful study of grammar on an example: 1.I can see the tables conjugating regular Spanish verbs in present. I can see there are a few basic types of verbs and they follow some rules. There are endings that I can apply to most Spanish verbs from now on. (And I can see they are being added to word stems which I will similarily use for other tenses later. Cool.) 2.I learn the few example verbs. I read them or hear them both in the course material and in other input and observe how the thing works. I am getting used to them. 3.I do exercises and at the beginning, I need to recall myself at times that this is the ending of the nosotros form and therefore it goes like this. 4.After some exercises, some amount of input and output practice in whichever form, I don't need to remember the rule anymore and I just use it correctly, unless there is an exception I need to learn separately (or I see/hear it enough times in the input). As a result, I have saved a lot of time compared to approaches serving one ending at a time or not explaining anything in hope I will just get this from examples. And I don't need to ask myself "what is the correct ending of first person of plural" or things like that, I just automatically use it. It is similar to the way I learnt the Czech grammar rules. At first, years ago, I had to focus and remember them when writing. But with enough input, a lot of reading, and with enough practice, I no longer need to spend time asking myself "which i/y should I use for this subject? or is it object?". I just write it and in 99,9% of cases correctly. I think no scientific papers are needed. There are just people who prefer one way and others who prefer the other way. The only thing you need to do is to find out which one are you. It sounds easy but too many people fail at learning because of it. Those who need to avoid most rules give up becuase they believe they have to learn then and they are bored. The others suffer from lack of system in the language input chaos and are frustrated by lack of progress due to the lack of the core they could hold on to. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4535 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 46 of 89 18 August 2013 at 9:26am | IP Logged | |||||
I agree. I realize I am using 'explicit' in the same sense as 'declarative knowledge' without properly explaining myself. In psychology 'declarative knowledge' has a technical meaning, and refers to the types of knowledge about the world that someone can talk about. So all native speakers actively use grammar, but few have an declarative knowledge of it in the sense they can tell you why they actively use one rule and not the other. The part of the brain that houses declarative knowledge of grammar, is mostly likely a very different part of the brain that that actively produces grammar (language). Which begs the question: What is the use of learning declarative (explicit) grammar rules? I can think of two reasons: (1) You can use these rules to monitor output from the part of the brain actively generating grammar (i.e., correct grammar mistakes on the fly - especially useful when writing - not so useful for speaking as it slows you down too much); (2) Use these rules to generate repetitive learning exercises that train up the part of the brain actively producing grammar. I guess the question in my mind is how different doing (2) is in the end different from simply reading/listening to tons of input. I agree what is most important is learning in a fashion that works/feels best for you. Edited by patrickwilken on 18 August 2013 at 9:43am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5011 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 47 of 89 18 August 2013 at 4:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It might be a different part of the brain but that doesn't mean as much as it sounds to mean. We already are using several parts to speak and they cooperate just fine.
I think the declarative grammar rules can have 3rd purpose: show you the pattern so that you don't have to search for it yourself and it's up to you what you wanna do with the knowledge. It's like being told a law of physic with examples and exercises vs. being just shown the exemples and expected to reinvent the law by yourself for the next test. Sure, it can be done and it is sometimes a valid teaching method, but it tends to require more time and a lot of people would just fail. Especially as the examples would need to be especially well chosen. I think the grammar and physics are similar in quite a lot of ways. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4535 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 48 of 89 18 August 2013 at 4:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
I agree that you can use declarative grammar rules to form grammatically correct sentences. However, the cost is that you speak really slowly and unnaturally. I remember years ago there was a book about the psychological techniques to win in sports. One of the "strategies" of putting someone off their game is to simply say "you're are doing really well". The person then starts monitoring their performance, which leads to disrupting the part of the brain that's actually doing the work. I suspect something similar happens when you start monitoring your speech output.
I think we are talking at cross-purposes a bit. As I understand it you have a part of the brain that does grammar, and another part that can learn/report rules. As far as I can tell they do not communicate directly with each other. So I can't see how learning grammar rules actually helps you speak naturally. Or how it can speed up learning in the part of the brain that actually does the speaking. What I think you are doing when you do repetitive grammar exercises is actually train up by input the part of the brain that produces language. That's why I think it's helpful. But perhaps I am really wrong here. I guess the simple test will be to see how my German goes in the next year. If I can get to C1 in speech and writing in the next 6-12 months through input then I'll be happy. Edited by patrickwilken on 18 August 2013 at 5:00pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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