Kids don’t need to learn gramar. If they want, those few that do can do that years later, once they are able to demonstrate that they can hear the language and identify what it means and read it in a snappy way. Not before. We’ve been over this.
Our defense of that point has been elaborate. We have primers here on this site that explain in crystal clear terms to anyone why we don’t need to teach grammar in our elementary and secondary language programs and why we need to fill up every available minute of a four year high school program with mostly input.
Unfortunately, we still have parents who challenge us on this point.(Admins are coming around fast, to their credit, because they see what is happening in our classrooms every day.) Those parents, exhibiting large amounts of hubris, want the grammar and they want the word lists.
They also want covered wagons and Model T’s because that is how they got around in high school and college in their own language programs and it worked for them – not! – so why can’t it work for their kids?
So what to do when they challenge us? Do we grab an article from the Primers, one probably written by Robert Harrell? Yes, it works. We could do that.
But I have been thinking lately about how crazy it is for us to even have to defend what we do with parents on this point! The parents are not the professionals. They haven’t done the research, nor have they done any language teaching, but they attack us anyway. And we defend ourselves in meetings of extreme nervousness and tension, sometimes with union reps present.
Here’s my point. I have been thinking lately of an option to defending ourselves. Why? Because re-educating people about how we learn languages takes a lot of work. Too much for me. And I find it singularly insulting.
What is my plan? It’s simple. I tell those parents that we will do the grammar NEXT year, not this year. I tell tham that their kids need more input before doing grammar and once they have heard and read the language enough, then they will get the grammar.
Here is the creative part. The next year, to start the year, I teach grammar for a period of a few weeks to no more than a month to start the kids’ second year of study. I’m talking the whole nine yards, worksheets and a good dosage of Eli Blume’s Amsco Second Year book if I want to do it right. (This has the added benefit of feeding my inner grammar teacher’s addiction.)
Of course, at the beginning of level 2, almost all of the kids go nuts, because they hate the grammar like any other normal person would except for the few freak memorizers. But we keep shoving it down their throats for three weeks at least.
Then things change: the parents come to us with the opposite problem. Their kids, having experienced stories and vPQA, are now complaining about how boring the class is. This is good for us.
So then we get to teach using CI, because the kids and most of the parents want it. We explain to the grammar parents what has happened and we are merely responding to the expressed needs of our customers, as it were.
(I recommend really limiting stories in level 2 esp. if the level 2 students are sophomores but that is another point.)
Did we teach grammar the next year? Yes, and in doing so in August of level 2 we made our customers want our CI product. Did we have to go into tense meetings with ignorant but influential helicopter parents in level 1? No, because we told them that the grammar would indeed be taught, but the next year. Did we lie? No.
Then, if in November or so of level 2 those parents don’t see enough grammar, rinse and repeat the message. Tell them we get heavy into grammar in level 3, etc. And guess what? We do, because properly spoken language is what grammar really is. They get the true grammar by listening to it and reading it. But this would not occur. This problem with grammar helicopter parents is a level 1 issue most of the time, and once kids are safely in levels 2 and above we are safe – we won’t be challenged – everybody gets it; they get CI and they like it.
Why this ruse? Look – I don’t like seeing strong and intelligent teachers having to defend why they teach in a certain way. It’s demeaning. And we all don’t have the eloquence with parents of a Laurie Clarcq or Nathaniel Hardt or Robert Harrell or Eric Herman.
I like this idea. The best defense is a good offense and this idea provides us with a good offense in a situation which should never be allowed to become a game about power and opposition by parents in the first place.