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Why grammar does not help ( some of us) | ||
Tags: Language Teaching | Grammar | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4826 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 57 of 59 11 September 2013 at 8:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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When the experienced non-native speaker of German comes across "Mädchen", he or she
will probably automatically associate it with "das" in the nominative singular, without even needing to think of it being neuter or a diminutive, even if she had to learn it that way in the early stages. In a similar way, nouns ending "ung" will automatically be associated with "die" in the nominative singular. For the native speaker, this process will be even more automatic, and probably much faster at the micro level, and he almost certainly won't think of whether it is in the nominative or not, and won't spend too much time worrying about whether it's singular or plural. All that will happen equally automatically (presumably). I think that what I am trying to say is that the more familiar one is with the word, it's the word itself that is the significant thing, and not the gender of the word. We don't have gender in English in the same way, but when it comes to people and talking about them in the 3rd person, I never need to consciously think about their sex before assigning the pronoun "he" or "she" to them, or "him" and "her", "his" or "hers". It happens unconsciously. I assume something of the sort is happening with speakers of languages where all nouns have a gender. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4620 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 58 of 59 12 September 2013 at 12:46am | IP Logged | ||
I just try and adopt an accept-and-learn policy. It doesn't bother me that Mädchen is a neuter word, I just take it as it comes. I knew it was das Mädchen long before I figured out what diminutives were, I just thought it was some sort of exception. Commonly-used works tend to stick pretty rapidly because you hear them time and time again. Knife, fork and spoon each have a different gender but with enough practise you find yourself reaching for the correct form. That said, you would have to be a robot to get the gender consistently correct when using more advanced vocabulary, but you can always guess. I've always believed that saying something incorrectly is infinitely preferable to keeping your mouth closed. Besides, gender slips do not impede understanding to any great degree. I'm sure native Germans are already well used to hearing foreigners getting their der, die and das mixed up. Edited by beano on 12 September 2013 at 12:47am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6701 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 59 12 September 2013 at 10:13am | IP Logged | ||
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For a native or near-native speaker a lot of things function automatically, but you don't get to that stage overnight. And that's where I think that it helps to establish the correct automatisms if I first go through a stage where grammatical rules are converted into one-step associations, in analogy with the way I learn vocabulary. The point is that I want to convert the quasi-mathematical formulas and semi-juridical rules of standard grammars into something small and manageable and meaningful which I can use as memory aids when I memorize words and expressions - and preferably also when I write or speak.
A rule formulated verbally on thirteen lines with seven exceptions and one exception to the exceptions in a standard grammar will slow you down so much that ypu can't use it for active writing or speech - not even if you have learned it by heart. On the other hand, letting a visual pattern that covers a wordorder rule or the uses of certain ending flash through your mind happens so fast that it is feasible to use the technique. With time you only have to hint at the thought about the notion, you don't have to spell it out in your brain. For instance I don't think "D I M I N U T I V E" inside my head when I see the word "Mädchen" - that's something I may have done while I learned it in school almost fifty years ago, but I'm past that stage. A semiautomated notion is like seeing the beginning of the path towards the real, but subconscious thing covered by the notion. A fully automated notion functions totally outside your conscious mind, but while you are preparing to put it there it can't be a bad thing to shape the concept using trustworthy information sources like grammars. My concern is how to transform that information into something that is easily memorable. And in practice that involves cutting it down into manageable and meaningful chunks, using imagery where applicable. For me it is evident that the learning process runs more smoothly if I don't have to go through a lot of messy and partly inconclusive evidence before I have learned how to use all forms of "Mädchen". Getting the rule at an early stage and then perousing the evidence is my preferred strategy. And as I have suggested before this is analogous to getting the translation of a new word right away instead of having to wait for some kind of order to install itself in a semantic chaos surrounding a void. Or using a bilingual setup to ease you through the stage where you can't understand even a simple genuine text in a new language without assistance. Edited by Iversen on 12 September 2013 at 10:33am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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