Some years agone, I was a high schoolhouse English teacher in the US. One of my foremost, and near dreaded, tasks was grading the essays of my students. Before I could fifty-fifty begin to tackle the issues of tone, mood, wording, or logical idea in the essays, I always get-go had to address the glaring mistakes that made my red ink pen run dry—the grammar. And subsequently these very frustrating grading sessions, I often had to teach grammer in the next lesson to help my students avoid making these mistakes in the future. When I would start the grammar lessons, the students would groan. They hated grammar, mostly because they didn't understand how or why it mattered. This scenario plays out in a similar manner in the strange linguistic communication classroom where teaching grammar is paramount to the curriculum. I can even recall my own days of learning Spanish in high school and beingness forced to conjugate verbs over and over once again. Three years of high schoolhouse Spanish, ane twelvemonth in college, and one year in graduate schoolhouse and I notwithstanding struggle to have a conversation in Spanish. Most people attribute this lack of speaking a language, even though y'all've studied it in school, to the emphasis on learning grammar. So what happens as a issue? Well, people start hating grammer and blame it for all of their language woes.

Information technology probably doesn't come as a surprise that equally an English teacher for both native and non-native speakers, I love learning grammar! In fact, learning the grammar is past far my favorite thing about learning a new language. Still, I can spend hours upon hours learning it (and I accept for Spanish, Portuguese, and now German) but never go from the learning phase to the application phase by actually, yous know, speaking. This is the problem that most people take with learning grammar. Information technology is definitely a justified badgerer because focusing on grammar tends to deemphasize the speaking, in an endeavour to make everything "sound correct".

What exactly is grammar?

Simply put, grammar is a set of linguistic habits that are constantly being changed and negotiated past speakers of that language. Only people usually view it as weird math equations that take too much energy to figure out. Most people believe their time would be much better spent by learning vocabulary. This totally makes sense. You can't say much if you don't know words. But that'due south a topic for a different day blog.

Even so, not observing these linguistic habits could have adverse implications on your intended meaning, such as saying "I become" when yous mean "I went"; or saying "Ich bin heiß" instead of "Mir ist heiß"; or even a failure to use the subjunctive mood in Castilian.

Learn like a child?

The argument that I usually hear about why learning grammar isn't so necessary is: children are fluent in their languages for years prior to learning the official grammar of that language. This is a valid point. Children are vivid language learners who can pick upwardly multiple languages with very little frustration or effort. They simply hear and then use it.

Yet, I always find it curious that people bring upwards children in the debate on grammar vs no grammer, by and large because children's brains are a lot more efficient than adult brains. What I mean past that is—in the first five years of a person's life they will experience the most brain growth than they ever will once more. So it's non a fair comparison to compare the language learning of a small child to that of an adult who has tons of other things to think most. By their very nature children are pattern-seeking individuals. So they don't necessarily have to be taught the deviation between the present simple and the past simple considering their brains can pick upwards on these linguistic patterns. Children also have very patient listeners who volition forgive their grammatical slip-ups and gently (and repeatedly) correct them.

Another criticism I have virtually people maxim small children can speak without learning grammar is—exercise you really want to sound like a five-yr one-time? Speaking like a v-year old is totally acceptable when you're starting your language learning journey, but when y'all're several years in, you want to demonstrate a more sophisticated way of speaking. Circuitous grammatical structures is 1 way we attain this.

So, why should nosotros acquire grammar?

Well I'yard glad you lot asked that. As frustrating equally learning grammar can exist, information technology does have its usefulness. First off, grammar creates a sort of standard mode of speaking across multiple-speaking groups. Take English for example—information technology isn't the well-nigh widely spoken first linguistic communication, simply it is the nigh widely-spoken second language. So with all of these people interacting from all different countries and language backgrounds, we need to have a mode to understand one another. Grammar helps fill that gap.

Another reason grammer is helpful is that it increases accuracy of expression. In that location are times when 1 verb tense is more appropriate to utilise than others. Grammar helps u.s.a. to express exactly what we hateful. Consider these examples:

  •  Jameson had been learning Portuguese for years before he met Esperanza. But after meeting her, his fluency increased exponentially.
  •  Jameson learned Portuguese for years before he met Esperanza, but she actually helped increase his fluency.

Certain, these two sentences are essentially proverb the same matter. Nevertheless the start instance provides a more accurate view of Jameson's language learning journeying. While both examples are, technically, grammatically right, the commencement i emphasizes the intention of the sentence better.

To be articulate, I'm non advocating you memorize the grammar rules of any language you learn (unless of course you desire to). In fact, most native speakers of a language don't know the grammar rules that governs that linguistic communication, fifty-fifty though they did learn it at some point. You learn the rules and the patterns that go forth with those rules and then you, usually, discard them from your listen once yous're comfortable. Afterwards on down the line, when someone asks you, why did you say "she goes" instead of "she go," you'll probably say something like "it just sounds correct".

So, how tin we use and practice proper grammar without necessarily learning the rules?

  • Learn in chunks: According to Michal Lewis' in Lexical Approach: "Modern analyses of real information suggest that nosotros are much less original in using language than we similar to believe. Much of what nosotros say, and a significant proportion of what we write, consists of prefabricated multi-discussion items. Fully fixed expressions must be acquired as wholes in precisely the aforementioned mode as individual words or very strong collocations"

In other words, much of the grammar that is used often throughout linguistic communication is more formulaic than artistic, so simply learning common chunks and patterns is more than sufficient.
Consider the example: "If she had studied, she would accept passed the examination." Instead of learning that this is the tertiary provisional and logic behind using it, you can simply learn these two chunks "If…had studied" and "would accept passed" and employ the structure to multiple situations.

  • Read more: Side by side, y'all need to read more than. While getting tons of listening comprehension experience  in your target linguistic communication is necessary for speaking, so is reading. People often regard reading equally the evil step-sister of listening. Merely ane thing to note is that speech tin can often be more informal than writing. It's not that people don't observe grammatical rules when speaking, simply they do tend to be a fiddling more relaxed. Writing, on the other hand, tends to be more than formal so reading volition help you identify grammatical structures that are important in that language. Reading is besides slower than listening, so you can really take your time identifying language patterns of the target language. That doesn't hateful yous should read boring things. Quite the contrary! Be sure to read things that actually involvement you or writers you like. Yous'll be a lot more likely to really pour over each discussion and blueprint if yous genuinely enjoy what you're reading.
  • Accept it and move on: Lastly, if yous really don't care about grammar, don't bother asking "why". In fact, language teachers hate the question "why". "Why practise I employ dativ instead of accusativ?" "Why do I have to learn the subjuntivo?" "Why does the third-person singular nowadays course require an "due south"? Information technology doesn't matter why. It's just the mode it is. Just note the blueprint, commit it to retentivity, and movement on.

Grammar has gotten a bad rep, but it isn't so bad. In that location is a way to teach, and learn, grammer in a way that doesn't have to feel roughshod. Hither, at Chatterbug, we proceed all of these things in mind when designing the curriculum: we teach grammar in chunks, we provide lots of passive exposure to important linguistic communication patterns, and while we provide grammar explanations for those who want them, they are not a requirement to progress in our system. If you have questions about German or Spanish grammar, so have a await at our grammer pages!

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