Hi Whizzes!
Today I’d like to talk about how grammar instruction has no place in a learning environment where language acquisition is the goal. 😀 😃 😄 😁. That's right.
First, let me start off by saying there is NOTHING WRONG WITH GRAMMAR. Grammar, I love you.😍 Don’t go changing, just to please me. Don’t dye your hair blonde, nor shave your legs, nor put on gobs of make-up. 🥰 You rock, really, you do. Don’t feel bad. Oh no, stop crying, dovey! I do love you. 😘 Love is NOT attachment! It’s not that I don’t want you in my life, you are in my life, in every human life, but you don’t belong…I mean…oh blubber. 😳 Now I've gone and done it.
Ok, ok. Let me explain, would you? 🙏 You see, it all depends on your goals. If your goal is to acquire a language or to facilitate the acquiring for others, or, to put it in other words, to develop a mental representation (think neural pathways) 🧠 that is strong, complex and robust for yourself, your students or your children, you need to receive or provide megaloads of input. MEGALOADS. Thousands upon thousands of hours of listening and reading Comprehensible Linguistic Input. Who has this type of time? That’s right, NOBODY. NADIE. PERSONNE (thanks French, for having a word that means both person and nobody…cuz that’s not confusing👍).
Grammar has a place in a LINGUISTICS course, along with:
🐡Phonetics
🐠Phonology
🐟Morphology
🐬Syntax
🐳Semantics
🐋Sociolinguistics
🦈And one long ETCETERA
(Don't ask me why I put fish emoji next to all those...cuz...I don't got an answer.)
You see, Grammar, you are loved, AND you have a family, a place, a meaningful life! Here’s some tissue🧻. There you go…feel better? Bene. Good. Gut (it was hilarious when I used this in a text message with a friend who doesn’t speak German and she was like…gut? And I was like…oops…I totally forgot that also means something in English!). #multilingualproblems😭
So how come I’m being uber unequivocal about this? Check out this equation:
Strong Mental Representation = Comprehended Linguistic Input/Time
The keyword there is time. The equation above would have exploded Einstein’s brain, because of LACK. OF. TIME.
🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯
In three years of middle school, my students get around 300 hours of TIME in their World Language Classrooms. What is achieved is nothing short of miraculous, but that is because we spend every minute on things that are proven by research to lead to language acquisition, and nothing else.
Here are some common objections, and my replies:
🔕“But they’re going to encounter Grammar in High School/College/Wherever, so I’ve got to prep them”
🔕But it’s good to have some knowledge of how the language functions, it’s helped me to acquire language faster.
🔕Then how come every class, app, tutor, ETC teaches it?
-------x-------
🔔They won’t encounter it if they are blessed enough to enter High Schools/Colleges/Wherevers with CI (Comprehensible Input) based programs. If you must include it in your curriculum, include it in OUT OF CLASS TIME, through “fun” digital exercises they can complete for some basic points.
🔔It might be good, but it doesn’t lead to language acquisition. If you have a goal, then your actions must follow through to meet that goal. If you have a perception that learning grammar helped you acquire language faster, then perhaps it did so on psychological/emotional level.
🔔Because they are intentionally or unintentionally unaware of the research behind language acquisition, are stuck in old ways, believe world language textbooks are the best way to go about things, or some other reason I can’t think of. It still won’t build your neural pathways, because it doesn't provide the right data to the brain.
I should end by saying that I’ve BEEN there. No one is born ANYTHING other than a warthog faced buffoon. FOR REALS. Here are the things I used to include in my classes:
💩Conjugation charts
💩Conjugation tests
💩Grammar worksheets.
💩Grammar lessons
💩The whole kit and caboodle.
I mean…when I do something, I go all the way. Good news is that when I drop something, I also drop it all the way…like I basically give a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘cold turkey’. It’s like antartic turkey, when it comes to Constanza Ontaneda. 🥶🦃
I DO NOT kid you when I say that I dropped these things from one day to the other when I learned about the research. Not a single student of mine ever EVER was like… "what happened to all that amazing grammar instruction, Maestra?” They were so busy reading and acting and laughing and who knows what else that they didn’t even notice. Wepa.
Constanza Ontaneda
Your own Personal Language Acquisition Witch
