K responds to my comment here yesterday. I like the term she coined to describe real (CI, speech based) grammar – “language acquisition grammar” – that’s the opposite of the plastic/rules based grammar and a creative term. Still, we see in her update below the dominant role of the teacher and the poisonous idea that the teacher and the grade drive the instruction and demand certain things of kids – verb conjugation, etc, – which we now know don’t really lead towards acquisition.
Mr Slavic:
I totally 100% agree with you that TPRS is the best way for us to learn grammar! How else do you think my test scores are so high? Not from any notes I’ve taken this year! It’s all from the verbal lessons from last year that I’ve remembered and been able to apply.
However, I had that entire year to learn those grammar concepts, and I was in a classroom where language acquisition grammar was valued – not so much the case now… not yet anyway.
So, I am being asked if I can help these kids learn the grammar fast so that they can pass the tests. However, they have told me that they would like to revisit the concepts to truly understand them , because like me, all they really want to do is speak French!
So, I am not disagreeing with you at all, just wondering if, and I know this goes completly against your philosophy of learning, but do you know of any ways to understand grammar quickly on a very basic level… ways to memorize verb conjugations etc.?
This way these kids can seem “smart” for their teacher (I hate the word smart). On a positive note… our lunch time audience is growing and my teacher has agreed to let me do a TPRS reading lesson tomorrow . I didn’t ask to do it, she just decided to go for it – congrats to her! Wish me luck!
[ed. note: ain’t it great? These kids want to speak French at lunch, but they have to instead spend even that time stressing about finding ways to learn in the old way. It’s like a bunch of road bikers, who want to ride up a beautiful Colorado mountain together, instead sitting down for a three hour long class on bike repair . Just so weird.]