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Not Studying Grammar | ||
Tags: Natural method | Grammar | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5564 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 65 of 89 20 August 2013 at 2:56pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I am no expert but as I understand it one of the most comprehensive studies of second
language education suggests that grammar based education is superior to input only - although as it was from the late 1960s it is now quite old. The Pennsylvania Language Teaching experiment from the late 1960s compared "traditional" (e.g. grammar and a 'reading' textbook based course, although n.b. this was not 1930s style grammar-translation and involved lots of reading), "audio-lingual" (FSI style language lab, 'over -learning' input based style) and "functional skills" based language approaches in schools in Pennsylvania. Based on MLA language exams taken by students across the control groups 'students achieved most in the "Traditional" strategy despite individual differences in ability' (Philip D Smith Jr, 'An Assessment of Three Foreign Language Teaching Strategies and Three Language Laboratory Systems' The French Review, Vol. 43, No. 2 (Dec., 1969), pp. 289-304 (available on JSTOR)). As I say, I am not qualified to comment on the experiment and it is now over 40 years old, but it does seem to be one of the most comprehensive experiments in the field that goes the other way to the Fiji experiment. I am sure, however, many objections have been made to its methodology. Edited by Elexi on 20 August 2013 at 4:06pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 66 of 89 20 August 2013 at 3:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I've met a lot of adults who find the whole business profoundly alien and uncomfortable. But they are usually the same who consider books to be only good as sources of ideas for television (ideally to be turned into soap operas).
Yes. A thousand times yes. You know, my highschool had a very good library if you take other schools as a measure. But it was a pain to see money going into tons of useless interactive boards (that get used twice a year) or new computers in the language classroom (that don't get used in language classes for good reasons but noone is alowed to use them for self study) while the French shelf in the library contained two old textbooks of dubious quality. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Qaanaaq Newbie United States Joined 4123 days ago 14 posts - 25 votes Speaks: English* | Message 67 of 89 20 August 2013 at 5:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I speak Spanish the best in terms of everything (grammar, idioms, etc), but that could also just be because Spanish grammar is easier than German grammar, at least for me. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4532 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 68 of 89 20 August 2013 at 7:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Iversen and others - first thanks for taking the time to write such interesting replies to my comments. I think your criticisms of the Fiji experiment are reasonable. However, there have been a lot of follow-up studies since, and the generally support the general finding, but as I said earlier their applicability to motivated adult self-learners is an open question. But I wonder if we are beating a bit of straw-man argument here. I am basically fond of the Antimoon, AJATT etc approaches. I don't think anyone is suggesting no grammar study at all. At the very least before you jump into reading a language it would be helpful to know whether the language uses SOV order, what a noun is, what a verb is, even how various tenses might be constructed. The practical question I have is whether you need to sweat over this for months learning the grammar bit by bit, working through lots of examples, as it taught in traditional languages schools (at least that's certainly how they teach German here in Berlin - it can take you months before the Dative case is introduced, and a lifetime before people whisper to you about the possible existence of the Genitive). Or whether you can do a relatively quick overview and then basically jump into interacting with the language directly via books, movies, conversations etc. My own experiences with language learning are obviously coloring my judgment here. Some years ago I did the Goethe Institute German courses A1 through B1. It was a night class, and there were 15 adult learners in the class. They were a well-educated group of professionals, keen to learn German. The class consisted of traditional grammar exercises, plus graded readings, conversations etc. The standard package. At the end of the six months or so at least 13 or so of the class had given up any hope of learning German. I can't speak for the others, but I was motivated, but the method just didn't work for me. I moved away from Germany and some years later returned to Berlin. I decided to do something different. I bought a simple grammar, read through it in the course of a month (2-3 pages a day). Used Anki to start building up vocab via word lists and sentences (ironically using the original Goethe textbooks) and then at about the same time started the Super Challenge here. After about four months I could go to a German cinema and watch movies without subtitles, which was amazing for me. I started reading real German books a bit later and now 14 months after I started I am at B2 in German for reading/listening and B1 for speaking/writing. Whether this approach, without opening a grammar book for more than a year will ultimately work to get me to C1 or C2 is an open question. I will certainly use grammar books when and if I need to fill in gaps in my knowledge. I do know that the more traditional approach with excellent teachers did not work for me and most of my classmates, but of course this is just an anecdote, and I wouldn't expect you to put any particular weight on it. Edited by patrickwilken on 20 August 2013 at 8:01pm 4 persons have 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 69 of 89 20 August 2013 at 8:00pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I was surprised to see FSI mentioned as the "grammar only" option. Just the basic course has over 80 hours of audio, which is 98% target language alone (the other 2% being just headings before sections, such as "Grammar 2", "Learning drill 3", etc). I do realize that most of the audio is based around lexical and grammatical exercises, but it is still a massive amount of input. And there are also substantial narrative sections: each unit has a dialogue which is repeated in various ways, there are 2-3 "situations" at the end of each unit, and from unit 7 onwards there is also a "narration". But then once I started to think about it, there are really no courses which actually advocate grammar and vocabulary alone. Some traditional textbooks only contain grammar lessons and vocabulary lists, but the authors always expected the students to practice with other students, and to read native materials. So what I'm getting at is that the idea of a "grammar only" option is really a red herring. It doesn't really exist. Except obviously there are students who use a traditional book and never get out of it, but that wouldn't have been the proper use of the course as the author intended. Edited by Jeffers on 20 August 2013 at 8:17pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 70 of 89 20 August 2013 at 9:46pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Well, I thought of it and mentioned it as the closest thing there is to grammar only method. But it's true that grammar only method is usually just a wrong combined method, at least when using this approach in the long them
Patrick, no offense meant, but it is you who keeps that strawman alive. Again, everybody agreed that reading is great for learning. But it has nothing to do with with the original question whether it is better to learn with explicit grammar or without. I think in any class, the huge drop out rate is usually causeded by the fact that the students are forced into a learning pattern that suits only a few of them because it is a kind of a compromise. And there are a few more disadvantages to classes so I don't think explaining grammar was the key trouble that drove them away. I highly doubt you would have been that successful without the grammar learning and anki but that's just my guess. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Tsopivo Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4470 days ago 258 posts - 411 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Esperanto | Message 71 of 89 21 August 2013 at 4:34am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I don't know and it is not really important to me since (1) I am already convinced that input does wonder and I enjoy it for its own sake anyway (2) this study does not prove or disprove anything concerning the topic of not studying grammar.
This is entirely different from what I have said. However, I do believe that most people agree that reading teach you a lot of grammar independent of formal grammar instruction, I think the debate is more about how fast and efficient this method is, how far it will get you and how it compares to other method (namely a combination of formal grammar study and large exposure to input). As for my opinion on the topic, I think emk was right on spot with both his comments and I plan on using a method similar to what you have outlined in your last post, not because I think it is the best method but because i believe it is the one that will fit me the best. About the 1st post, I would also add that while a lot of native speakers do not receive any kind of grammar education and still achieve to speak with almost no grammatical mistakes (at least in their dialect or sociolect), a lot of them do not achieve the same when it comes to writing and this with a massive amount of both input and feedback that would be really hard for an adult language learner to match.
Again, this is not apparent from these studies simply because this is not the subject of these studies. It is also not apparent from these studies that chocolate is good against depression. Saying "Study A does not tend to prove hypothesis B" does not imply that "Study A tend to disprove hypothesis B". Edited by Tsopivo on 21 August 2013 at 4:40am 2 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 72 of 89 21 August 2013 at 10:36am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I simply don't know how grammar is taught in schools today (no children, not a teacher), but I know that textbooks are moving in a direction which in my opinion is the wrong one, and I would expect that teaching in schools and ordinary evening courses reflect that.
As Patrickwilken writes:
So the first element in learning a foreign language with the help of grammars would be to learn some basic terminology and some ways of grammatical thinking. Ideally you should do that on your own language first, but I have the impression that the ruling pedagogic class hasn't grasped that. They can see that you don't need much grammatical terminology to write an essay in your native language, and then they stop teaching 'native' grammar. The next best solution is to produce materials where the basic notions are defined using the base language of the book - though that goes squarely against the idea that a foreign language should be taught in that language. For instance you should tell the learners that "word", "house" and "madness" are substantives, and that they are 'in the genitive case' if you have added an 's (where you can do it, of course). And after that you can change your focus to the target language and for instance explain that Russian has a nominative and a genitive, but on top of that also a vocative, an accusative etc. Sooner or later the learners will have to face the grim real world, and it serves no purpose to hide the realities from them. At the same time you should however tell the learners not to start learning all the forms by root memorizing - that wouldn't help them to use the cases in practice. Learn the forms through reading and (if possible) listening, and keep your grammar for reference and to give you ideas about things it might be worth looking out for. For instance you could have a "relative clauses" day, where you try to identify systematize the kinds of relative constructions in a text while having your grammar open on the relevant pages. Every new concept in a grammatical description should be exemplified with several short examples (not long quotes). And regularities should be pointed out, but NOT in the way it is practiced in some grammars, where you are told that form X can be constructed from form Y by adding or removing something. If a learner doesn't know form X then he/she can't be expected to know form Y either so at the very least you must demonstrate the mechanism through concrete examples - and show where the forms are situated in the grand scheme (most grammarians think in terminology, but sometimes a graphical presentation is more memorable). And by the way: formulate the rule as a "by the way, have you noticed that...?" note. Not as a construction rule - it will never be used as a construction rule. Another pet peeve of mine is the kind of explanation that formulates a general rule, mentions some examples and then defines the exceptions to the exceptions in abstract quasi-mathematical terms. If you can't avoid it then at least you should exemplify each group, but rules within rules within rules is a sign of failing reality check - nobody can learn that kind of rules and even less use such rules while speaking. If it can't be otherwise then give examples, but it would be better to rethink your logic. For instance there are two main kinds of conjunctions in Irish: those with -r and those without (the -r a rest of an old word "ro"). One kind is used with the present (rule A), the other with the past tense (rule B), but not if the verb belongs to a subgroup within a limited number of irregular verbs - others follow the normal dividing line. This could be defined a negative exception from rule B (verb Z doesn't follow rule B), but for the learner positive additions to a rule are easier to remember and easier to use (Like "All verbs follow rule A in the present. Irregular verb Z1, Z2, Z3 and Z4 also follow rule A in the past tense - other irregular verbs and all regular verbs follow rule B"). Grammar must be explained in a very concrete way, preferably as rules to follow rather than asrules not to follow, and assuming that a learner knows form X when he/she is assumed not to know form Y is idiotic. Personally I spend a lot of time trying to understand the regularities and weeding out exceptions from the general schemes, and after some deliberation this activity often results in a 'green' sheet where I have summarized as concisely and comprehensively as possible what I have to learn. The exceptions can be in a form where they can be clssified and summarized separately on their own green sheet (like the forms of certain very common and very irregular verbs), but often they will just consist of things you need to learn like you learn vocabulary. OK, then learn them like vocabulary (using whatever technique you prefer for that purpose). They shouldn't clutter your summary of the regular system. It may be too much to expect from schoolchildren that they should write their own grammars (or even their own green sheets), but it is not too far out to tell them that grammar is something you learn by thinking about ways to remember it AND by being alert to the grammar in the things you read and hear. Edited by Iversen on 21 August 2013 at 11:26am 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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