The Importance of Grammar

Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here.

Today I want to talk a little bit about grammar. By the way, you notice I don't have my glasses on. I had this eye operated on so I can see. So if I look in... at the screen now if I close my bad eye, I can see very, very clearly. If I close this eye, it's a blur. Eventually, I'll have the other eye done and then I'll see, you know, far away. I'll still need glasses for reading, but that's great. Grammar, the importance of grammar and how we should deal with grammar.

You know, there's this constant debate. Some people say grammar is a waste of time. Other people say that you have to first learn the basics. And it's a theme that I've dealt with before, but I thought I would go into it again. Very quickly on the subject of videos in different languages, we want to take our time doing them because we want to develop subtitles in English.

But I've got the list here: {Steve Speaks Various Languages}

You know, it's hard to switch.

{Steve Speaks Various Languages}

(Spanish) Español tambien porque acabo de leer un libro muy muy bueno que se llama "Dime quien soy" de Julia Navarro.

Muy interesante. {Steve Speaks Various Languages}

I don't think I'll be able to handle Polish yet.

{Steve Speaks Various Languages}

Anyway, just to say, I'll be going through those, but I want to wait until we're able to provide subtitles.

Grammar, big debate on our forum at LingQ, my view is this. I think traditional language instruction places far too much emphasis on grammar and it does it the wrong way. It introduces complicated explanations, complicated rules and then a bunch of exercises where you're forced to try to practice what you've just, presumably, learned. The trouble is you don't learn it because many of these correct usage patterns take a while to assimilate. And therefore, I feel that rather than having even... Like most language books you buy, language books, are going to have 70% grammar explanations, exercises and a small amount of text.

I think you should have far more text, interesting text, with a vocabulary list and some focus on the basic patterns that show up in this text and then they should be introduced again in subsequent lessons. Here again is this pattern that we've seen before, here's five more examples, here are two that show up in the lesson, so you're getting a chance to review the basic patterns without worrying too much about explanations. You can have some explanations, but without the drills and without the exercises and focus mostly on content and the reason is this.

A language that you have had lots of exposure in, that you've spoken a lot in, you start to sense instinctively what is correct and what isn't. Correct not only insofar as grammar rule endings or whatever, but also in terms of word usage. And this is just a matter of getting used to the language and when you are used to the language you naturally say it correctly. If you are relying on your recollection of the rule, you will always doubt yourself.

Even when you got it right, even when you have a sense of how it's used correctly, you will doubt yourself. You'll want to look it up, you'll want to check against the rule and that's not really good for developing fluency. So focus more on comprehension, on vocabulary, on input, getting used to the language, with a little bit of help by way of review of basic grammar patterns. So grammar has its place, but that's how I would go about it. So I'm trying to keep these videos short.

We can have more discussion on the subject, if there's interest. Bye for now.