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LINGQ: Explicit grammar instruction | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Zhuangzi Nonaglot Language Program Publisher Senior Member Canada lingq.com Joined 7034 days ago 646 posts - 688 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Japanese, Swedish, Mandarin, Cantonese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 69 12 August 2007 at 12:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
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WARNING: This thread was started by Steve Kaufmann, publisher of lingq.com. While he discusses general ideas about language learning, the thread frequently refers to his program and website. Consider this a meet-the-publisher thread.<br>Administrator
What should be the role of explicit grammar instruction in language books and language courses? - very small. How interested are teachers and editors of language books in explicit grammar instruction? very much! When I pick up a Colloquial or Help Yourself, or Living Language or Assimil beginner book or any other language text book, the ratio of language content to explanation and exercizes is small. Colloquial Korean is 278 pages long but has only 20 diaogues of content. Help Yourself Russian is 300 pages long with only 20 content lessons. Most books have 10% or less language content including the vocabulary lists for that content. Some books are even worse. Continuing Korean has only 12 content units and covers 500 pages. One reason is that the authors introduce lots of irrelevant vocabulary with each chapter. I only want the vocabulary that I need to work my way through each content item. I essentially only use the content and vocabulary lists that go with each content item, and the sound track of course. I feel it is more efficient to focus my time and effort on this 10% I have neither the time nor the interest to read the other 90%, and when I do I am invariably disappointed. It usually tells me something I have already noticed in the language, or tells me something that I do not understand. Assimil is a good example of this. Assimill provides a translation into French for each content unit which is a help altho would not be necessary if it were in electronic text. However, their notes are rarely useful. I believe that a majority of learners and potential language learners would enjoy their language studies more and achieve more success if they could focus on content of their choice rather than explanation. One example of this occurred in a French speaking area in Canada a few years ago. One rural school had no money for an English teacher and a neighbouring one did. The school without money gave the children books and tapes to read and listen to. At the end of the year those kids had progressed further than the kids in the traditional classroom. Edited by administrator on 16 August 2007 at 11:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| burntgorilla Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6450 days ago 202 posts - 206 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Danish | Message 2 of 69 12 August 2007 at 1:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, that system might work for you but it doesn't work for everyone. I like to have grammar explanations, I don't like to have to sit and try and work out what such and such means, and I like to be correct instead of being blissfully ignorant of my mistakes. Personally, I don't think that's it's really fair to do page comparisons. One dialogue might take only one page, but it contains lots of information. A grammar point might also take a page of explanation, but takes less time and contains less information. My TY book only has about five dialogues in each unit, but you can get a lot of time out of them.
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| lady_skywalker Triglot Senior Member Netherlands aspiringpolyglotblog Joined 6896 days ago 909 posts - 942 votes Speaks: Spanish, English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, French, Dutch, Italian | Message 3 of 69 12 August 2007 at 1:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm beginning to think Zhuangzi has declared war on all things grammar. :)
While I find grammar books a tad tedious and prefer to learn things from context, I think some grounding in basic grammar can be quite useful. I always take some time to learn the basics and then see how it's applied by using the sentence method (a method I recently picked up from the alljapaneseallthetime blog). Grammar books which don't go into *too* much detail and which rely heavily on examples are the ones that work for me. Kodansha's 'Japanese Sentence Patters for Effective Communication' is a perfect example of how Japanese grammar can be kept interesting. I've found it extremely useful in my Japanese studies and wish that similar books existed for other languages. As for whether grammar is necessary for learning a language, I think the level of grammar tackled depends on the person. I never had a huge problem with grammar at school so I really don't mind bringing grammar into my language learning, though I have to admit I was not very fond of the verb conjugation exercises my French teacher insisted on giving us every week. Other people absolutely detest grammar while others spend a little too much time on it (in my opinion). Language learning is a very individual activity and everyone has their preferred methods of learning. Saying one particular method is pointless because you don't agree with it seems a bit harsh. After all, LingQ is a system that doesn't work for me (I'd rather have a book to work with given that I spend 4 hours commuting to work each day) but I wouldn't go around telling people that they should stay away from it. Similarly, I don't find flashcards particularly effective but I know a lot of people swear by them so who am I to tell them otherwise? :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7162 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 4 of 69 12 August 2007 at 2:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
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With all due respect, Zhuangzi, we've seen quite a few recent posts that rehash your views about disliking the current state of affairs in language instruction and your desire to convince everyone of the merits of loading up on more dialogues or texts and dispensing with all but a bare minimum of explanations of grammar.
This is not to say that I disagree entirely with your view. In my profiles of various Eastern European languages in the "Collaborative Writing" section of the forum, I've often pointed out the flaw of the respective Teach Yourself or Colloquial series with their meager amount of exercises and dialogues Your comparison of ratio of grammar explanations to dialogues doesn't consider that the quality of some grammatical explanations is better than others. The quality of grammatical explanations in the various Teach Yourself books varies in my experience from rather good in TY Czech to rather poor in TY Slovene. I don't believe that it's a simple matter of comparing length of A to length of B. I'd prefer a comprehensive and long explanation of a grammatical topic (or at least have the discussion interspersed throughout the course as necessary.) instead of a brief explanation when the topic is first encountered and then it turns out that it's the only discussion of the topic even though the course starts using it in ways that are not transparent to the learner. Why not bring the quantity of exercises or dialogues to a level closer to that of the attendant comments on grammar? I.e. if there're a lot of discussions on grammar, there'd better be a lot of exercises or dialogues/examples which allow the learner to practice applying and see these features of the language. Anyway, most of us who've been following the forum lately are already aware of the debate between learning approaches. Wasn't it agreed that people should just adopt the methods that best suit themselves? For example, I swear by FSI's methods, but as someone here posted, the FSI courses at gdfellows' site are like Linux - free, serviceable, but not for everyone. I like that analogy and certainly I don't go about posting that the world needs more FSI at the expense of all of the other language courses. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| que? Newbie Canada Joined 6419 days ago 16 posts - 17 votes Speaks: English* | Message 5 of 69 12 August 2007 at 2:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Zhuangzi,
I'm in Canada too and I've never heard that story about the French-speaking kids learning English. Do you mind telling me where you found it? It sounds really interesting. This reminds me of a story my mom told me about a few weeks ago. She was watching TV and she saw a story about a girl who lives in a mountainous, rural area in South Korea. The girl decided to try to learn English and Chinese by listening to books and watching movies, since her school had little to no resources or language instruction. She now speaks both languages fluently. :) Edited by que? on 12 August 2007 at 2:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| glossa.passion Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6327 days ago 267 posts - 349 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, EnglishC1, Danish Studies: Spanish, Dutch | Message 6 of 69 12 August 2007 at 4:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'd like to quote from the introduction of a "normal" language course (book and tapes) called Hindi Urdu BOL CHAL:
"Different people like to learn languages in different ways, and there is no one right way. The right way to learn is really the one that works for you. So don't feel you have to go through this book page by page, from front to back, though you can certainly do that if you want. Think of it as one of a number of resources alongside ...[others]... which you can use in the way you choose and that best supports your own learning style. Some people, for example, like to understand all the grammatical rules of the language they're learning as it helps them to cope with new and different structures. ... Other people feel they learn better if they got lots of practice in hearing the language in use. They might prefer to spend more time listening ... You may want to experiment for a while before deciding on your own balance of learning activities ..." Even reading a mere introduction could enlighten :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| FSI Senior Member United States Joined 6365 days ago 550 posts - 590 votes Speaks: English* | Message 7 of 69 12 August 2007 at 4:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
Indeed. I'd like to hear more about this as well.
Ooh - I know listen-reading when I hear (or read) it, and that's a brilliant example of an input-based learning system producing wondrous results. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Zhuangzi Nonaglot Language Program Publisher Senior Member Canada lingq.com Joined 7034 days ago 646 posts - 688 votes Speaks: English*, French, Japanese, Swedish, Mandarin, Cantonese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Russian | Message 8 of 69 12 August 2007 at 8:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I have not got the time to search for all the details about this case but here is one reference I found on the web just now.
It would also be instructive to look at a study by Lightbown and Halter, discussed on pp. 88-89 of the same book, in the section entitled "Just listen". French-speaking students aged 9-10 learning English were given one period per day of time to read English stories accompanied by audio tapes, without any instruction. Lightbown and Halter "investigated the second language development of hundreds of children in this program and have compared these findings with the second language development of those in the regular, aural-oral ESL program at the same grade level. Their results have revealed that learners in the comprehension-based program learn English as well as (and in some cases better than) learners in the regular program. This is true not only for their comprehension skills but also for their speaking skills. This comes as something of a surprise since the learners in the innovative programs never practice spoken English in their classes." (Lightbown, P.M.. 1992 'Can they do it themselves? A comprehension-based ESL course for young children' in R. Courchene, J. Glidden, J. St. Jogn, and C. Therien (eds): Comprehension-based Second Language Teaching/L'Enseignement des langues secondes axe sur la comprehension. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press. pp. 353-70.) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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