Most people know I don’t like stuyding grammar, most of you probably think I hate grammar. Well, it’s true that I don’t like to study grammar, but it’s not that I hate it. It’s just that I think it blurs your language ability and it’s pretty much certain that it destroys your ability to naturally form sentences.
At the moment, however, I do study grammar to bring my Spanish up to a native level (a good native speaker learned a huge chunk of grammar in school, which I missed and because of that I need to study grammar now that I’m fluent). And I like it, a lot. It gives me new ammunition and it really helps me now that I speak Spanish fluently.
But the problem with many people is that they think they need grammar right from the beginning. Of course you need grammar in order to speak correctly, but you don’t need to study it until you’re at an advanced stage. And probably you now think that I’m not right.
Why do so many people think they need grammar? It’s all about history. So, time for a history lesson after which you’ll know why you think you need grammar, and why you’re not right assuming this.
Most of us get familiar with language learning in (high) school. And most of us hate it, but many also leave school with the feeling they have to study grammar because pretty much every teacher tells you it’s the right thing to do.
Now rewind to the year 1850, in which foreign language education was build around Ancient Greek and Latin. Because they both were (and are) dead languages, meaning there are no native speakers, they teach these languages by exposing students to grammar, grammar and more grammar. And that was boring, but pretty much the only way to teach the entire language. Decoding a book in order to learn grammar is just as boring as cramming verb tables.
When people needed to learn modern languages instead of ancient languages, they just applied the same teaching method they used for Greek and Latin to languages like French, Spanish, German, etc. This meant that students had to memorise verb tables, nouns, adjectives, know all the linguistic terms, etc.
However, the goal is to learn how to produce instead of just understanding these modern languages. So learning grammar and stupid word lists will only hinder you. And it keeps hindering people because many teachers (especially native speaking teachers) think they need to teach grammar, otherwise their students won’t ever speak the target language. The reverse is true.
Here’s an interesting quote from an article at Slate by Robert Lane Greene, called “Why learning Arabic is so hard“:
But the ferociously unfamiliar grammar sets us all adrift. Arabic is a VSO language, which means the verb usually comes before the subject and object. It has a dual number, so nouns and verbs must be learned in singular, dual, and plural. A present-tense verb has 13 forms. There are three noun cases and two genders. Some European languages have just as many forms to keep track of, but in Arabic the idiosyncrasies can be mind-boggling. When Karam explains that numbers are marked for gender—but most numbers take the opposite gender from the word they are modifying—we students stare at each other in slack-jawed solidarity. When we learn that adjectives modifying nonhuman plurals always have a feminine singular form—meaning that “the cars are new” comes out as “the cars, she are new”—I can hear heads banging on the desks around me. I want to do the same.
Seriously mate, Arabic is different but not difficult. You and your teacher are mystifying the language and are making it harder than it actually is. I’m not learning Arabic, but did take up Turkish a while ago, which is as freaky as Arabic in terms of grammar. But grammar has to come naturally, not crammed.
So who is to blame? Of course it’s easy to blame the teachers we have. But it’s actually a part of language learning culture of the past ~150 years that’s to blame. Luckily we live in an age in which it’s easier than ever to learn a language yourself. Don’t believe the idiotic ideas like that you have to cram grammar, word lists and other silly things.
Get some serious immersion, stop mystifying your target language and get the heck fluent to prove the teachers and schools wrong.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!Related Posts:
Studying grammar CAN help
How to Ignore Grammar
Studying grammar can help – part 2
How to Learn a Language From Scratch Without Studying Grammar
Screw grammar
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
When you’ve got someone willing to correct your every mistake (like parents) it’s easy to learn by ‘immersion’. When you don’t, it’s painfully difficult. In that case, just like Ancient Greek and Latin, it’s necessary to start learning grammar early on.
Besides which, if you start learning grammar early, you don’t have so much to learn when you get to ‘fluency’ level.
Nobody corrected my mistakes in the beginning, and that wasn’t necessary as I didn’t speak. I just got correct input, input and more input. Then I started speaking and yes, I did receive some feedback. But in the end I didn’t make many mistakes because I got correct input in the first place…
And you’re wrong that you don’t need grammar study when you’re fluent. A kid is fluent when he/she goes to school, but still needs some corrections. Because we often don’t have people that correct us as adults (when you do have a regular speaking partner that corrects you it’s better), we can use formal grammar study to get better at our target language.
All my posts are based on my own experience and on research by both me and scientists. Krashen, for example, has done quite some research to the role of grammar. He admits that grammar study works for most people, but not until they have a high level of speaking and writing in their target language. Research shows that most people that start with grammar study will never become fluent, against the fact that most people that ignore grammar study in the beginning and make progress by getting input do get fluent.
If you understand Dutch: the research done by Kwakernaak is interesting as well. He leans more to a yes-to-grammar approach, but also sees that starting with grammar can be harmful. Do you know Stephen Kaufman by the way? He speaks several languages at a high level without doing any form of grammar study. I suggest to read his blog: http://thelinguist.blogs.com
I’ve always said that grammar doesn’t really make sense until you already know it.
Grammars were originally written to describe language, not teach it. It’s too bad that for millennia, folks have looked at academic descriptions of language as some kind of shortcut to teaching it.
It’s funny that when someone wants to learn how to play basketball, they don’t run out and buy an academic description to go an master it. If they’re serious about it, and, say, want to become a referee or maybe just know more about the game, they can go out and read that book… but I doubt anyone would argue that that’s the one single and best way to learn how to play basketball. It’s certainly not the first step.
That said, as a teacher I do think there have been advances in teaching methodology (communicative, task based, comprehensible input, etc) that are based on research on stages of acquisition, that don’t follow the old model. Those classes are harder to find, though.
Anyway, it’s a myth that people learn because of error correction; there is tons of literature about error correction in L1 and L2 acquisition in the library. The famous study is Martin Braine’s Other One Spoon dialog seems to show that children, at least, learn language regardless of error correction, maybe even in spite of it… (that study is quoted in Pinker 1994) Kids seem to acquire the grammar *when they’re ready to learn it.*
Yeah, Krashen has written about it as well. I’ll check out the literature you mentioned.
It’s interesting that more people wrote about this subject. I recently read a book about classroom instruction for modern foreign languages, and the author kept repeating that ’students seem to learn in spite of getting classroom instruction, instead of thanks to classroom instruction’. How weird is that?
The other day I read an interesting article about how an ideal classroom should be: http://thelinguist.blogs.com/how_to_learn_english_and/2009/12/teaching-spanish-to-illegal-american-immigrants-in-mexico.html
That’s what I’m currently trying to do. Unfortunately it’s not that easy to get the school directors with me…
Good post. I don’t think you are wrong about the grammar issue. I think you are right. If grammar is ever to be studied, it should only take place after one attains fluency. In no way is grammar study ever necessary to learn a language. Input is the only requirement, and the number of hours is the main factor.
I wonder if you called Latin and Greek “death languages” by mistake. I suppose you meant “dead languages”, am I right? thanks
Hehe, that’s a mistake, yup. Funny one though
.
Fixed it, thanks.
I studied Latin for two years in college. Now I can draw out conjugation tables and describe in intricate detail the functions of each part of a sentence. What I cannot do is read a simple sentence without mentally flipping back to tables and charts, and my vocabulary is so underdeveloped that I am barely more literate than someone who has just started their studies.
Studying grammar is the worst thing I could have done. Someone needs to invent an “All Latin All The Time” method (unfortunately there’s no Latin tv…)
People should not let grammar bother then when learning a language. Actually, when starting out, it shouldn’t be bothered. Now I feel much more passionate about learning Spanish knowing that grammar isn’t important yet.
Yes, I’ve heard of Stephen Kaufman and I love his videos. I love how he made sense out of not worrying about grammar. When we are born we start by listening… Then we are able to speak it, then read and write it. When learning a language it’s good to pick up the sound of the language and read it.
That method has helped me and I feel that I am improving when I listen to Spanish. I don’t worry about grammar, just what’s being said.
Your point is very well-taken. I do think it depends on how much of “the unknown” a person is willing to tolerate though. For me, for instance, when I started learning German, I studied the grammar intensively. And of course two-thirds of it didn’t stick. It wasn’t until massive exposure that “the rules” solidified themselves and nowadays when I read clarifications, they make complete sense. So again, I agree with what you’re saying.
But the small nuance is: I don’t regret for a minute that intensive grammar study at the beginning, because it let me know what to watch out for. I knew there were cases; I knew some adjectives were going to change; I knew there were times when a verb would be placed at the end. I didn’t know when or why, but I knew what to watch for, and that was psychologically calming. I can’t believe I’m the only such punctilious language learner type out there.
PS Great website! Really inspirational.
That’s actually what I did when I started with Spanish. But even though I’m fluent in Spanish now, I still find myself looking for certain things from time to time. I blame grammar study for this, otherwise I wouldn’t have known the grammar and thus couldn’t worry about it.
Now, in the beginning I crammed verb tables and sometimes they still pop up, preventing me from speaking freely (this happens very rarely).