GRAMMAR
WEBQUEST
Nowadays we
live in a very competitive society and we should be concient of what it could be
an advantage or a disadvantage for us. Obviously one of the instruments that
will be basic in our professional life is our second language, or maybe also
the third one. But how can we say that we speak a second language if we have
been studying it for 15 years and we still do not are the fluent enough? Well
maybe all the rules are really difficult to apply or maybe we have been
learning them in the wrong way. Each one of us has proved that the best way of
learning a language is by speaking and by being in the right environment. Why?
Simply because we had learned our first language this way. First speaking, then
reading and writing. The learning of the second language is the same, we can’t
start writing if we don’t know even how to write.
In his essay Formal grammar instructions: Another educator comments,
Krashen (1992) lists three reasons why the teaching of grammar in a formal way
is not only unuseful but absurd: “Performers need to know the rule, have enough
time to apply the rule, and need to be focused on rule”. But when we want to
express ourselves is very difficult to focus in all these circumstances because
the expression, the real meaning of what we want to say is lost. Besides is not
good to learn so many rules by hard because with the time we will forget them,
and the only thing we will remind is what we had learned thanks to the
environment that surround us.
Something that is really important is to learn the language in the
correct environment. Imagine that you have to live in a new country with a new
language, the only way of learning it will be speaking with the people and
spending a lot of time with them (without a grammar teacher). But you must feel
comfortable and motivated, on this will depend if you learn or not the new
language. The motivation and the environment are really special because you
will make an extra effort to learn and to express yourself if you are having
fun and in consecuence you will learn unconsciously.
There are a lot of ways of learning grammar without being in a
classroom, taking notes and doing lot of homework, and Krashen says that an
excellent example of comprehensible input is reading. He says that this way we
will increase the grammatical accuracy, the vocabulary and the spelling level,
and finally we will speak more fluently. Another reason of focusing in fluency
and not in grammar is that when we speak people keep understanding even if we
have some grammar mistakes, but is really complicated to understand a person
who speaks with the correct order and the correct words, but is not fluent at
all.
After this we can say that the learning of a second language is a
“process of natural acquisition” (Pienemann, 1989). The best example of this
are babies, almost when they are two or
three years old they communicate in an excellent way, and of course they had
never been in a classroom with a grammar teacher. If we use the same process to
the second language learning, the results will be excellent, not only we will
have to speak in the correct way, also to write in an easier way.
At next we try to summarise the most important points about learn a
second language without formal grammar instruction, and we will talk about some
important ways to learn a second language in the fastest way.
As we triad to explain in the first part of this report Learning a
second language could be shocking to anyone specially if the learning process
is focused on grammatical rules, so the experience tell us that there are four
skills that should be developed in order to use correctly the language and they
are, namely listening, speaking, reading and writing.
It is also important that during this first step of introduction to a
new language the student presents a high motivation and a fine directed
perception, otherwise it is strongly possible that the own perspectives blocks
the learning process and as a result of this the student presents slow or none
advance.
The second step of the learning process should be speaking, once that
the student feels strong on listening and it has the enough vocabulary then he
should starts trying to communicate his ideas to others, by this the student
practice his pronunciation and learns how to links the words in order to form
sentences that should be perfectly understandable to the interlocutors, of
course that in the beginning the student could feel a little frustrated but the
practice would give to him confidence on himself.
We think that the fastest way to learn English as a 2nd
language involves the same to natural stages as you learn your native language
as a child, the first is input stage where you were mainly listening and later
reading. You gradually built up your vocabulary and you absorb the grammar
rules naturally and effortlessly, the second is the activation stage where you
were responding to those around you and were playing games that built and re
enforced your vocabulary.
Finally, we think that formal grammar instruction is unnecessary because
the fastest way to learn English is listening reading and speak with native
people, as we said grammar rules can absorb naturally in speaking.
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