| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3] | English grammar explanation Thread poster: Fiona Gonçalves
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Rod Walters 
Japan
Local time: 08:11
Japanese to English
| Hardwired to get it mostly right | Jun 12, 2009 |
"And a crack on the ceiling had a habit
Of sometimes looking like a rabbit"
from Madeleine
Humans are wired to spot meaningful patterns, seeing them even when they aren't meaningful, or using them without even consciously recognizing them. Hence, I was able to make SOV sentences in Japanese without consciously knowing I was using that structure, because I heard other people using it. Reading later that "Japanese uses an SOV pattern" was just a refinement to my knowledg... See more "And a crack on the ceiling had a habit
Of sometimes looking like a rabbit"
from Madeleine
Humans are wired to spot meaningful patterns, seeing them even when they aren't meaningful, or using them without even consciously recognizing them. Hence, I was able to make SOV sentences in Japanese without consciously knowing I was using that structure, because I heard other people using it. Reading later that "Japanese uses an SOV pattern" was just a refinement to my knowledge.
Example:
Kyo wa, gohan igai ni nanika tabetai
Today, I rice other than something want to eat
Actually, I studied German for a year, and my teacher's grammar-based approach just gave me the impression that "German is a difficult language". Being averse to difficulty in general, I gave it up (which was fine, because all the German girls I met later all spoke English).
But knowing about and thinking about grammar are nonetheless valuable. For example, it's good to know the reason why "different than" or "different to" are wrong so that you can experience distress every time you hear it. It's also good to know that stylistic rules about use of "that" and "which" are arbitrary and can be largely ignored, no doubt to the distress of others at a lower knowledge level.
From these observations, I conclude (with Alan) that starting with a grammatical approach is counter-productive when learning a language, and that querying the basic grammatical competence of a language professional as a non-native proofreader is just asking for a rebuke of some sort. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | 'Focus on Form'; training in grammar; teacher handbook | Jun 12, 2009 |
In EFL, teaching grammar seems to be called 'Focus on Form' these days ...:
http://www.tuj.ac.jp/newsite/main/tesol/events/20080909.html
A Seminar: "Focus on Form in ESL/EFL Classrooms"
@ Lingua5B Our foreign language teachers at secondary school taught us grammar, but I took languages (French/Latin) for only 3 years. I also had a certain amount of Eng... See more In EFL, teaching grammar seems to be called 'Focus on Form' these days ...:
http://www.tuj.ac.jp/newsite/main/tesol/events/20080909.html
A Seminar: "Focus on Form in ESL/EFL Classrooms"
@ Lingua5B Our foreign language teachers at secondary school taught us grammar, but I took languages (French/Latin) for only 3 years. I also had a certain amount of English grammar at primary school. Grammar, phonology, writing system, and lexis were taught as subjects in their own right in my second year in Beijing.
[ This is a handbook I bought as a teacher-trainee in 1997. It's for teaching English in NZ schools. http://english.unitecnology.ac.nz/resources/resources/exp_lang/home.html
Ministry of Education, 'Exploring Language - A Handbook for Teachers', Learning Media, Wellington, 1996 ]
[Edited at 2009-06-12 08:59 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | urbom
Ujedinjeno Kraljevstvo
Local time: 00:11
German to English
+ ...
| | Grammatical approach | Jun 12, 2009 |
Rod Walters wrote:
From these observations, I conclude (with Alan) that starting with a grammatical approach is counter-productive when learning a language,
Hm, I don't think it's possible to generalise. My approach to learning a language is very logical and based on understanding its grammar - the vocabulary comes later. My husband, OTOH, is very much an intuitive learner, and has a communication first, grammar later approach. This certainly means that he's much more talkative in an incompletely mastered language than I am, but my brain just doesn't work that way - if I don't understand HOW I should be saying something, I can't say it at all. So a grammatical approach is the only one that works for me.
and that querying the basic grammatical competence of a language professional as a non-native proofreader is just asking for a rebuke of some sort.
Couldn't agree more.
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Williamson
Ujedinjeno Kraljevstvo
Local time: 00:11
Flemish to English
+ ...
| Grammar is the backbone of a language. | Jun 17, 2009 |
It may be outdated, but I have grown up with a system which believed in a solid knowledge of grammar and which was based upon that the analysis of both semantics and syntax of a language.
Real-life situations confirmed this point of view of language acquisition time and again:
For example: I lived together with a native of Russian.
I can read Cyrillic a little and I absorbed the meaning of a lot of words, but there is no grammar/structure in my head.
Whet... See more It may be outdated, but I have grown up with a system which believed in a solid knowledge of grammar and which was based upon that the analysis of both semantics and syntax of a language.
Real-life situations confirmed this point of view of language acquisition time and again:
For example: I lived together with a native of Russian.
I can read Cyrillic a little and I absorbed the meaning of a lot of words, but there is no grammar/structure in my head.
Whether you like it or not, a some point of language acquisition, you have to learn grammar. After mastering grammar (both semantics and syntax), language acquisition is only a matter of further assimilation of words (English has 2 million words ) and learning more about style.
We, the natives.... we learned/learnt from our parents and surroundings :
Hopefully your parents and surroundings spoke R.P. and Queen's English or Standard American. After all, you translate into your native language, which is not Cockney, the dialect of Liverpool, Scottish or the language spoken in New-York, but standard written English.
[Edited at 2009-06-18 08:05 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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