“Our “formal knowledge” of a second language, the rules learned in class and from texts, is not responsible for fluency, but only has the function of checking and making repairs on the output of the acquired system” (p. 30).
The Fallacy: Grammar as a Shortcut to Fluency
This was a while ago now; eight years maybe. When I think back on anything more than five years past I just make up a number and hope. I was in New York, somewhere around 34th and 7th, listening to Tim Ferris on a crude electronic device my children already see as an artifact fit for the Museum of Ancient History.
Mr. Ferris had received acclaim for his 4-hour book series, which emphasizes learning new skills in less time with clever hacks. I bought a course that promised he would do the same for language learning. The lecture was entitled, “Learn Any Language in 3 Months!”
Who says teachers aren’t suckers?
It was a depressing time career-wise. I felt like a fraud teaching English without fluency in another language. You would think that my university degree in Teaching English as a Second Language would shield me from this type of nonsense, but I had to try. Like most New Yorkers, I was short on time. His approach was indeed eloquent. He encouraged listeners to translate eight sentences into their target language.
- The apple is red.
- It is John’s apple.
- I give John the apple.
- We give him the apple.
- He gives it to John.
- She gives it to him.
- I must give it to him.
- I want to give it to her.
Your mind has a funny way of believing what it wants, Josh. You returned home and settled into your desk. The room black. The lamp casting gold light on these eight sacred sentences. You translated and asked your Japanese wife to double check. You even created flashcards with spaced repetition algorithms to maximize retention. And here you are, eight years later, and you have the comprehension of a preschooler. This is your fault, Josh, not Tim Ferris. His idea does reveal interesting characteristics of your target language, but somewhere in your warped mind you thought you would actually be able to achieve Japanese fluency in three months. When you found out how little this approach helped you communicate you gave up, and the past eight years has been a series of starts and stops, always looking for the shortest possible route to fluency.
You can still read about this approach on Ferris’ blog, “How to learn but not master any language in 1 hour plus a favor”, a much less persuasive title than the lecture I had bought. Here are a few of the benefits he claims, “They help me to see how the verbs are conjugated…placement of indirect objects…is it subject-verb object like English,” and a few other language features. What I learned the hard way was something established nearly 40 years ago by Stephen Krashen in The Natural Approach, “The mistake the innovators have made is to assume that a conscious understanding of grammar is a prerequisite to acquiring communicative competence… thus, any grammar-based method which purports to develop communication skills will fail with the majority of students,” (p. 16).
Remember Josh, shortcuts are for guys looking for another notch in their belt, an anecdote for dinner parties, a bullet point on their resume for a job that never existed. You are not interested in bucket lists. You are interested in mastery. Never forget the goal: You want to understand messages and communicate ideas at a near-native level in Japanese.
Now, ignore the bullshit shortcuts and look for ways to live with the language.
| Caretaker Speech: A Window into Language Acquisition |
|---|
Characteristic #1 - Parents use language to communicate (not teach). |
Characteristic #2 - Grammar and vocabulary are simplified to ensure understanding. |
Characteristic #3 - The most important tense is the simple present; past and future tenses are hardly ever employed. |
Reality: Grammar will be acquired over time
Learning the grammar of a language feels like a shortcut. It has an irresistible pull for a brain wired to find connections. If you know about relative clauses and how to use them, you come to believe you can include these constructions in your next conversation. While you might be able to regurgitate the information on a test in class, you will probably find your tongue twisted in knots at your best friend’s next dinner party. Even worse, you might have memorized some lines from your textbook, “The man who is hosting this party is my friend;” grammatically correct and a complete conversation killer. Most avoid conversations with people who speak like an elementary school grammar textbook.
And I don’t think any Japanese person wants to hear my babble, grammatically correct or not, which is why I focus on comprehensible input for at least six months. I read and listen to easy and enjoyable content in Japanese and trust that over time the grammatical forms will seep into my unconscious, so when it does come time to speak, I do it naturally. “…our claim is that in the long run students will speak with more grammatical accuracy if the initial emphasis is on communication skills,” (p.58).
Josh, you are in the midst of this now, about three months into your Japanese studies and you have your doubts. You like the idea. Reading and listening to a lot of easy and enjoyable content suits your character. You plug in words and phrases you want to remember into a flashcard app and spend a few hours a day remembering the input. Your vocabulary has crept up to 1800, according to the app. You still feel like you can’t converse. You took a Japanese proficiency test last week and failed miserably in the grammar section. That is to be expected. Take heart. Be patient. Trust the process.
You want a shortcut. Grammar feels like a shortcut; it’s not. Grammar is an ad hoc explanation for something you learned through extensive experience.
Future: Some deliberate grammar practice will be necessary
Joaquin never did well in freshman Spanish. I teased him about it since he spoke Spanish everyday with his family. He always had the same excuse, “I can speak it. I don’t need to explain it.” Most of the time he would be right, but in the classroom he did need to explain it. The problem is that educators conflate explanation with execution. This is something people often forget when they buy a $500 course. Information is cheap, execution is what pays the bills. The same holds true for language learning. If your goal is to understand messages and communicate ideas at a near-native level, it is best achieved through extensive comprehensible input.
Still, relying solely on reading and listening to acquire grammatical forms may not be enough. You will need to do some deliberate practice, especially if you are taking a language proficiency exam.
Josh, you have decided to take an exam every six months to measure your progress in Japanese. Continue to focus on reading and listening to easy and enjoyable content most of the time. However, you can not explain what you understand and you are still poor at constructing grammatically accurate output. You will have to spend some of your time studying grammar, but do not let it demotivate you. Download prepackaged flashcards and minimize your review time to less than 20 minutes a day. Small but frequent exercises on certain grammatical concepts in conjunction with your extensive exposure to comprehensible input should be enough to pass these exams.
Conclusion: Lecturing birds how to fly
The Natural Approach was published nearly 40 years ago and yet grammar instruction remains a staple of the foreign language classroom. Why? Well, Josh, you don’t know, but you can see the appeal. Just look at how you hunger for anything that includes the word optimization. Everyone knows that life is short and god is dead so you best not waste a breath. You want a shortcut. Grammar feels like a shortcut; it’s not. Grammar is an ad hoc explanation for something you learned through extensive experience. English teachers like you, Josh, are too busy teaching out of a textbook when you should be bringing your mother into class for show-and-tell. She saved you from worrying over terminology like relative clauses. Consider your mom when you crack open your flashcard app to study Japanese. Even better, the next time you think you are teaching English, remember you are just a blind bird, and the best you can do is empower your students to learn how to see.