Hey Mr. Slavic,
I have epiphanies in weird places. I know that that is a weird introduction, but it’s true. Last week at lunch, a few kids asked if there were grammar activities in TPRS that would help them remember grammar. They are tactile learners, so grammar can be a bit difficult to learn because of the format. I was thinking about it this weekend and I had an epiphany while I was skiing a bump run at Winter Park with my ski team. I don’t know how much you know about skiing bumps, but there are two basic strategies. One is to go around the bumps and plan out each turn around them, and the second one- if you are very good and a little crazy is to go directly over each bump. You bounce a lot more the second way My idea for grammar to accommodate all learning styles is to do a verbal lesson with examples from stories, then using paper or preferably foam mats to write a letter on each mat. The mats would be placed apart forcing jumping/ movement from mat to mat. I would place the correct subjects and verbs together for the first round – and as they jump on each letter they have to say it out loud in French. This is a lot like planning each turn around the bumps. The second round, I would mix up the subjects and verbs forcing them to bounce around a lot more and match them correctly. For visual people, I had a piece of paper that had subjects and verbs that fit together like a puzzle. I set this all up during my off hour today and then we went outside and did this at lunch. It worked pretty well. I’m wondering if you have any tips.
I hope things are going well.
I responded:
K, I got no tips, although I like the connection with skiing you thought of. That is clearly going up the taxonomy mountain. Your friends are tactile learners, and you are presenting them some grammar ideas because you don’t see TPRS as the best format for teaching grammar, is what I understand. In my own view, though, TPRS is the best way to teach grammar, and plenty of it. How sad that people think otherwise. The thing is, we pretty much know that studying such grammar as you describe does not lead to acquisition of the language. So why learn those rules and stuff? Learning that kind of grammar, vs. the way we learn grammar in TPRS, never helped anyone learn a language. It is like the people who thought that the world was flat. Even when presented with irrefutable proof that the world was not flat, they just couldn’t change their thinking for a long, long time. All those kids at your school have been told that grammar helps them, but it doesn’t. Everybody needs to just get over the grammar thing – studying grammar in place of hearing the language does not work, never has worked, and never will work. You see, you are describing something that isn’t even real grammar. It is a kind of plastic representation of something deeper – correctly spoken language. Real grammar is the language spoken correctly. Why have those kids learn the fake grammar when they can learn the real kind? Again, learning the fake kind in no way leads to fluency. If that were true, many people who studied it for four years in high school and then on into college would be able to speak the language. But they can’t.
P.S. I want to be clear here. I am not saying that we shouldn’t ever learn the rules-based plastic kind of shadow grammar. Sure we can – many of us, like 1 in 25, love to do that. I love shadow grammar. (By the term “shadow grammar” I don’t mean anything derogatory, just to indicate that it is a shadow of the “real” grammar – correctly spoken language. I have spent my life studying both spoken French and it’s shadow grammar, and I see both as beautiful complex tapestries crafted for our use by a mind vastly greater than that of any one human being. Anything made by God is beautiful. Plus, there are so many versions and aspects of language, so many colors of the language rainbow. Pure and stunning beauty of sound and form everywhere. I am just trying to say that it is a very simple question of what to introduce first and it what quantities so that people can see some real results for a change. Studying the rules/plastic version of the target language just cannot lead to acquisition. It can, however, and has, lead many people (like the other 24 out of 25) to think that they cannot learn a language. How messed up is that?