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Benvenuti, Bienvenue, Bienvenidos, Croeso and Welcome.
Hi, I’m Juliet. Join me on my language learning journey and discover my thoughts on different aspects of language learning with the A Language Learning Tale Podcast. Today I’m talking about…
Should you forget about Grammar?
You may have listened to a previous podcast of mine about the book The Language Game: How improvisation created language and changed the world, where they talked about the fact that when we talk, grammar often goes out the window. And no, I’m not just referring to talking in your target language, I mean when talking in your own language. At the time, I think I said it begs the question, why do we get so hung up about getting things right in a foreign language?
Of course, what I mean by this is, why do we get hung up about the grammar in a foreign language? If the locals don’t, why should we?
There are also people who say that you should only use comprehensible input and acquisition methods to learn a language. More on that shortly.
So, why do we learn grammar?
The first argument against it might be that we don’t learn grammar when we’re kids and we still learn a language. Well, that’s kind of true, but once we get to a certain age, we do learn grammar. First, we learn how to construct sentences in a way that doesn’t raise a smile from our parents, because it sounded a little weird. It’s not formal grammar, but grammar is sentence contruction, after all. Plus, when we go to school, most of us start learning grammar formally. So, kids do learn grammar, whether they like it, or not.
How might that process translate to an adult? Well, if we were to stumble around like kids in the early stages of learning a language, it would take years to be able to string a paragraph together in a reasonable manner and would require living in a family where only that language is spoken. Is that what we want? Is that what we can have? Unlikely.
And going back to the only comprehensible input idea, although how it would be comprehensible if we hadn’t learnt any grammar, I’m not sure - anyway, if we were just to listen to content in the language until somehow we magically understood everything, that would take even longer, because there would be no personal contact and interaction, and the personal contact and reinforcement is what helps us as kids. We don’t just listen to something, then speak and everything is correct.
The truth is, we need grammar. We need to understand something about the way sentences are constructed to be able to have the ability to make mistakes. But, do we need to study it until we’re blue in the face? No, I don’t think so. We need a basic grounding of all the tenses and sentence ordering, alongside a chunk of common vocabulary and then we can go off on our acquisition journey to get the rest. I don’t mean, by the way, that you shouldn’t be consuming content during this inital phase, just that it will be more prominent once you’ve got the basic grammar in your head.
Do I think you need to pore over grammar books for hours on end? Not really. Do I think you need to know what the pluperfect tense is? Yes.
It’s about balance. Nothing else. Because, of course, once you start speaking, that grammar is definitely going to go out the window.
That’s all for today’s episode. Don’t forget to join me again next time, for more language learning tips, tricks and tales and in the meantime, check out the A Language Learning Tale YouTube channel for additional, non-podcast content.
Ciao, salut, adiós, hwyl and bye for now.