[EliRivers]

Front-loading explicit study of grammar is a total waste of time.

I am far more competent in written Japanese than spoken, both reading and writing it, essentially through understanding grammar. "Total waste of time" seems a harsh appraisal.

[jacobolus]

If you take two novices and dump one into arbitrarily extensive grammar lessons for 2 years, and the other into spending a couple hours per day listening (i.e. actively focusing attention on trying to understand what is being said) to the language for 2 years, at the end the first person won’t speak the language and the second person will.

The first person is going to learn something, but it’s not an efficient use of their time if the goal is language fluency.

If you want to learn to read, then by far the most effective use of time is to practice reading, with whatever minimal bootstrapping is necessary up front to start reading very basic material.

This is not just speculation. There has been a ton of scholarly research on this topic.

[tasogare]

>spending a couple hours per day listening [...] to the language for 2 years, at the end the first person won’t speak the language and the second person will.

It doesn’t work like that. For the student to make any progress he need to be able to understand most of the things in the speech (this is called comprehensible input, and the theory is both applicable to listening and reading). That’s why there are people living in foreign country for years yet cannot speak or understand the language at all.

Also it’s kinda stupid to say that language learning must be either grammar/voc learning or listening: it needs to be both. Classes are needed because they make portion of listening material comprehensible, which is impossible by listening only.

[jacobolus]

> (this is called comprehensible input, and the theory is both applicable to listening and reading)

Notice the link I put in my first comment.

Yes, the more comprehensible the early exposure, the faster the student will advance at the beginning. If content is too advanced learning will be much slower.

It would be great if more language teachers and curricula put more significant effort into developing hiqh-quality materials aimed at being largely comprehensible to complete beginners. Many extant materials and courses do a very poor job at this.

> there are people living in foreign country for years yet cannot speak or understand the language at all.

Learning a language takes consistent deliberate effort.

> kinda stupid to say that language learning must be either grammar/voc learning or listening: it needs to be both

Grammar lessons have low marginal value for language learners, and are by no means necessary. Many people learn a foreign language without any formal grammar instruction whatsoever.

[bayesian_horse]

Yes, formal grammar instruction is optional. But it does accelerate things.

I mean, it may depend on your goals. If you are focused on communicating, and don't actually intend on using the language efficiently and competently, then maybe formal grammar is a waste of time.

Otherwise you need to have this information. You have a choice to get it in a systematic way or to decipher it on your own.

[jacobolus]

By the way, here’s Krashen (the comprehensible input guy):

http://www.sdkrashen.com/content/articles/teaching_grammar_w...

> Research on the relationship between formal grammar instruction and performance on measures of writing ability is very consistent: There is no relationship between grammar study and writing (Krashen, 1984). Perhaps the most convincing research is that of Elley, Barham, Lamb and Wyllie (1976). After a three year study comparing the effects of traditional grammar, transformational grammar and no grammar on high school students in New Zealand, they concluded that " ... English grammar, whether traditional or transformational, has virtually no influence on the language growth of typical secondary students" (pp. 17-18).

> In addition, research is equally consistent in showing that writing ability and reading are related: Those who read more, write better (Krashen, 1993a). The reform school boys in Fader's Hooked on Books study who read self-selected paperback books for two years outperformed comparison boys on writing fluency, writing complexity, and reading, as well as on measures self-esteem and attitude towards school (Fader, 1976).

> It is well-established that one can become an excellent writer with very little formal instruction in grammar, and those who do often give reading the credit for their writing ability: "I wanted to write and I did not even know the English language. I bought English grammars and found them dull. I felt I was getting a better sense of the language from novels than from grammars" (Wright, 1966, p. 275).

> Finally, our ability to consciously learn the rules of grammar is very limited. Linguists have told us that they have not yet succeeded in describing the rules of language, and anyone who has studied linguistics will attest to the complexity of the rules linguists have described. Studies in second language acquisition show that even experienced students have an incomplete knowledge of the rules they are taught, do not remember the rules well, and have difficulty applying them (Krashen, 1993b, Alderson, Clapham, and Steel, 1997).

> [...]

> I am proposing, in other words, a two-step procedure: 1. Students first acquire (absorb subconsciously) a great deal of grammatical competence through reading. 2. Students are taught to use a grammar handbook to increase their grammatical accuracy further, using consciously learned rules. The grammar handbook can be introduced in junior high school or high school. If a great deal of reading has been done, and continues to be done, the grammar handbook will need to be used only occasionally.

[bayesian_horse]

Good luck learning romanic or slavic grammar from "comprehensible input".

And the thing Krashen seems to be talking about is actually phase 2 in my model. The students may have taken the long way towards basic knowledge in English, but in order to advance, they need to spend time reading text to assimilate the grammar and vocabulary more.

[comex]

The essay you linked is about teaching English grammar to native English speakers. I looked it up, and Krashen has written about second-language acquisition as well, but you're citing the wrong thing.

[jacobolus]

You’re right. It was elsewhere in this discussion tree that we were discussing grammar instruction in a student’s native language. Feel free to mentally move it, if that helps.

[jaco8]

Well , there are 2 different kinds of learners. There are those who need grammar and those who do not. I can remember vocabulary but never remembered the grammar of the 4 languages I learnt over the years.

[bayesian_horse]

To use a language efficiently and proficiently, you need to know all the grammar. Regardless if you have learned them systematically or if you have deciphered them by yourself. The latter might be somewhat easier if the foreign language is close to your own language, which means you already got that information. I've found Indoeuropean languages much easier to learn than others.

Sometimes even the definition of "grammar" is confusing. If you study Indoeuropean languages, they are so similar that "studying" grammar is mostly getting the conjugation and declination right. Sometimes you only have to switch some endings between languages. With other languages, the entire system of morphology is different, because for example they have more "persons" or whatever.

Additionally, English or Chinese may seem to have easier grammar, but then the complexity is hidden in the vocabulary or usage patterns.

[bayesian_horse]

I haven't seen any research that says passive listening without instruction has any effect at all.

You may have some success in a language related to your native language. Good luck with something truly foreign...

[EliRivers]

with whatever minimal bootstrapping is necessary up front to start reading very basic material

That's how I started reading. Basic grammar, and some vocab. Vocab I didn't know was simple to look up; grammar I didn't know rendered the entire sentence incomprehensible and looking up the individual words did very little to help. If I knew the grammar but not the vocab, thirty seconds to comprehension. If I knew the vocab but not the grammar, order of magnitude more time to understand, often requiring assistance from someone else. Knowing the grammar felt like doing it on easy mode.

Not knowing the grammar rendered it a waste of time. THAT was the "total waste of time".

It was basically how it worked. "Here is some more reading to do, in order to comprehend it, here is some grammar that you will need." Literally front-loaded. My experience of effective learning is basically the complete opposite of what you advocated; no front-loading of grammar rendered it extraordinarily inefficient.

I dread to think how long even the basic sentence structure of "topic - comment" in Japanese would have taken me to realise if I'd had to learn it by just listening to people use it; like I'm meant to be some kind of linguistic detective. Telling me that before hearing the sentence spoken rendered it SO much more understandable, right from the start. I was able to start making valid, meaningful sentences in Japanese within sixty seconds. Topic - comment. Here's some nouns, here are some words that are like adjectives, here's how you mark the "topic" which you could think of as similar to the "subject" in English grammar, but go easy on that because the grammar is different, here's the copula, off you go.

Great work, that was a nice sixty seconds of comprehensible and correct Japanese, none of which you had ever heard before - you constructed it all yourself. Pretty good for someone who's been studying the language less than ten minutes. Here's the copula in the past tense, off you go with that.

My God, I genuinely flinch to think about how long that would have taken me without any front-loading of grammar. If I was meant to just guess how the language worked based on listening to it. What a waste of time that would be.

I reckon someone could listen to Japanese for a very long time before realising that some of the things that are kind of like adjectives can change depending on tense, but for some of them the copula changes. A native English speaker would have to really be good to spot that quickly. What a waste of time that would be compared to simply learning that piece of grammar.