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Not Studying Grammar | ||
Tags: Natural method | Grammar | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Tsopivo Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4470 days ago 258 posts - 411 votes  Speaks: French*, English Studies: Esperanto | Message 57 of 89 20 August 2013 at 1:00am | IP Logged | ||
This study points to the (very obvious for most people on Htlal) fact that reading and input in general is of capital importance to learning a language. It does not however suggest that grammar + input is less efficient than input alone. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4532 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 58 of 89 20 August 2013 at 9:20am | IP Logged | ||
I thought I said that in my last post. ;) This is a hard argument to have here since the goal posts seem to change. Is this study valid or not? Are the students being taught grammar well at school or not? I think there are two possible readings of the Fiji study (and the multiple other studies conducted subsequently across the globe that come to the same conclusion). 1. In the control condition the students are taught well, they are motivated - the reading group learns MUCH MORE GRAMMAR. 2. In the control condition the students are poorly taught, they are unmotivated - the reading group learns MUCH MORE GRAMMAR. If it's obvious to everyone on HTLAL that reading will teach you tons of grammar independent of formal grammar instruction then that's news to me. A lot of the posts seem to be suggesting that formal grammar instruction is either (1) necessary to learn grammar; (2) necessary to learn grammar efficiently. That's not apparent from these studies. Edited by patrickwilken on 20 August 2013 at 9:28am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6702 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 59 of 89 20 August 2013 at 11:09am | IP Logged | ||
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At the onset of the Fiji study the pupils had spent 3 years with formal teaching and little outside exposure to English, and that had brought them to the level illustrated by the worst of the examples or worse. We don't know whether one more year plus some advice actually resulted in some meagre progress in the control group, but it can't amount to much, cfr. the level of the samples. So essentially the message is that formal training as practiced in Fiji is a disaster. I actually don't know how children are taught in Fiji, but from school visits during my travels and from TV programs from other countries I guess it mostly consists of listening to the teacher and chorusing. And I have no reason to believe that the children from rural areas in Fiji are less motivated than Danish children, but it is clear that they don't learn much English in those three years. And why? The obvious answer is that children in the Fijian rural areas don't get enough exposure - and presumably they also have few opportunities to actually try out their English.
OK, 1/2 hour of reading daily works as a miracle (provided that the text samples are representative, but let's assume they are). However alongside those crucial minutes with a book all the pupils still received a lot of traditional teaching, and that could be a relevant factor. Let's say you have a car that weighs 1 ton, and it goes nowhere. You add 50 kg of fuel and it suddenly can drive hundreds of kilometers into the countryside. But you can't conclude from that that the transmission could be removed. Or in more pedagogical terms: it could be that the pupils get something out of the formal training which didn't in itself allow them to use their English, but which in combination with just a minimum exposure suddenly makes the dams burst, and three years worth of unusable knowledge suddenly turns out to be useful after all. Maybe this isn't what happens, but the Fiji experiment can't disprove the hypothesis. And my own experiences supports it. For instance I had Latin in two period and did quite well, but in both cases it was grammar-translation with no incentive to activate Latin as a living language. When I stopped I quickly lost my ability to read Latin, and I thought everything was lost. But then I took up Latin again after almost 30 years, and I discovered that I could revive my grammar within a very short time - so obviously those old grammar-translation courses had left an imprint which could be revived like a desiccated tardigrade. If you want to know whether grammar can be learnt without formal study at all there is only one way: your test group must be taught from the day one using the natural method, and ideally you should have two control groups: one taught exclusively through formal methods (in practice using the grammar-translation methods) and one group taught through a combination of exposure and formal study. However the Fiji experiment lacks totally a strictly no-grammar option, both because all the pupils already had had three years of supposedly formal schooling, and because they all still followed classes conducted along the traditional lines. My conclusion from the Fiji experiment is that we still don't know whether totally 'grammarless' teaching functions (and that was not the purpose of the study), but you can conclude that teaching without exposure isn't efficient, and that even a limited amount of reading on top of standard teaching works miracles. And therefore all learners at least should have the option of reading something interesting as part of their education. But you can't use the study to justify teaching exclusively based on exposure. Edited by Iversen on 20 August 2013 at 12:03pm 3 persons have 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 60 of 89 20 August 2013 at 12:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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For anyone else who (like me) had never heard the word:
Tardigrade 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6702 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 61 of 89 20 August 2013 at 1:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sorry about the inconvenience, but I think you will agree that a tardigrade in its frozen state is a miracle of nature and a good approximation to a language learned through formal methods and then left to wither away in the cold ... but with an uncanny ability to resurrect when the circumstances allow this.
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| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 62 of 89 20 August 2013 at 2:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks, Iversen.
I think the discussion has moved to a different direction and one where no discussion is needed. Everyone here knows that adding more input to any kind of learning is very beneficial. And noone here advocated that learning purely grammar is more efficient than grammar + input. But still, there is no conclusion (and I doubt there will be) which of those three is "objectively" the most efficient. 1. only input (like AJATT), 2. input and clear grammar explanation (most learners here on htlal) 3. only grammar based learning with no extra input (anyone learning FSI only). All three have their success stories. My guess, based on htlal and the people I know in real life, is that the most successful learners went the second road, the combination. To get any at least a bit reliable study, several points would need to be adressed. As Iversen said, you would need to take kids who are beginning to learn, not those after several years (I think in that particular study, the children did so well because reading just made work all the theory they had learnt before and because it was more fun) But as well, you might want to choose adults instead as there are differences between how we learn and how the children learn, you might want to define the measured result more precisely (who speaks the best after one year? after three years? who is able to express themselves sooner?), take into account motivation or IQ of the children (as there will be differences between an elite school and a cheap one in a poor neighbourhood) and so on. Really, I doubt there will ever be any reliable study about this. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Theycalme_Jane Diglot Newbie United Kingdom theafrikaanschalleng Joined 4124 days ago 28 posts - 48 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 63 of 89 20 August 2013 at 2:37pm | IP Logged | ||
Sorry, I find it hard to jump into the conversation at the Fiji project that I know little about. It seems that there's been a lot of talk about how children learn a language and if we can do the same. I'm not sure I should comment, because there've been a lot of good comments out there. Someone also remarked on AJAAT and I was going to suggest his approach to be a useful approach, as this is the furthest I got with languages. I am currently doing something very similar to his approach on http://theafrikaanschallenge.wordpress.com, i.e. my blog. I'm learning n Afrikaans, using only freely available sources and trying to make it as entertaining as I possibly can, recording videos of my progress, commenting on the helpfullness of sources, etc. Not that I'm completely doing without grammar, but I'm just not looking at grammar textbooks in particular or dedicate any specific effort to learning the grammar. When I come across something that explains to me why the syntax is the way it is, I'm trying to come up with a few example sentences to get a grip of the idea and be more able to use it on other occasions. On the whole, I'm trying to take an approach that is based entirely on what feels right and is needed at the moment, getting help from people that write feedback on my blog posts as I go. Bloggers are really helpful. I can only suggest starting one and having your own kind of small community to help you out. Skyping is also nice, but not as readily available to a lot of people. Edited by Theycalme_Jane on 20 August 2013 at 3:06pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5531 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 64 of 89 20 August 2013 at 2:43pm | IP Logged | ||
The other issue here is that young children aren't actually very good at formal grammar. When I was in school, we were taught nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs for 5 or 6 straight years of English class, finishing around 15 years old. And even then, there were quite a few people who found the whole business profoundly alien and uncomfortable. One of the advantages of extensive reading (and TV, if available) for younger kids is that they can rely more on their natural language-learning skills, and less on their relatively weak reasoning skills. And just as an aside, I've recently become a big believer in the importance of popular libraries. We have tons of books at home, but our kids love visiting the tiny neighborhood library. There are thousands of kid's books, something for every age and taste, and my kids can always find something cool and new. Meanwhile, I have a substantial French media budget, and I'd love to have access to a similar library in French, because right now I can't just casually pick up several interesting books a week the way my kids can. Extensive reading works—I've seen it myself during the Super Challenge—but it works much better when interesting books are available for free in large quantities. Stephen Krashen's big plea, for a great many years now, has been to supply kids with more libraries (and fewer annual governmental exams). I think most foreign language programs would benefit enormously from a library of, say, 1000 age-appropriate books that appeal to kids. Certainly experiments like the one in Fiji suggest it would be a good use of educational funds, if nothing else. I have nothing against grammar study, in moderation. I just doubt that younger kids get much out of it. And most of the methods that work for kids seem to work for me, combined with a modest amount of grammar study and some feedback on my mistakes. 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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