Grammar
 

Some of my workmates think an exhaustive study of grammar(:yuck:)is essential to learn a foreign language, but I disagree. What about you?:confused:

You, as a teacher would know. Have your students had success without
extensive grammar?
I certainly think knowing the function and how to identify difference between nouns, verbs, pronouns,abverbs adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions, direct objects, and indirect objects would help. I do think that learning a second language requires the drudgery of memorization.

Most people who speak only one language don't really know its grammar. They may think they do, but a deeper understanding of grammar really begins when you are forced to apply the rules you know to a foreign tongue. All of a sudden, you start to pay a lot of attention to sentence structure. Learning a foreign tongue is a good grammar refresher course, to say the least.

That is so true, Rusty. When I studied grammar in school, it just seemed like a dull excercise. It was only when I studied a foreign language that I realised what a phenominal machine language is. It's a grid that's largely transferable from one language to another.It's almost like a map of how our brains work. You learn your own language better by studying another tongue. Moreover, you learn more about your own country by spending time in another.

Foreign language teachers really need to study language acquisition theory from a linguistic perspective. What things aid language acquisition/learning and what things don't. When you teach language, you're always teaching grammar, period. The question is, should you teach it explicitly or not? My opinion is that the explicit teaching of grammar rules actually hinders language learning for the majority of people. Why? Most people's knowledge of grammar doesn't go much beyond noun, verb and adjective. If you start throwing around terms like gender, declination, case, accusative, nominative, conjugation-- people's minds actually close off to what you're saying, since you've already alienated them. I've found for example when teaching Spanish I don't even mention the term gender. I say Spanish has four words for the word "the", and which one you use is determined by the word that follows it. La goes with casa, and el goes with perro etc. And after giving out lots of examples, someone will ask if la goes with all words that end in 'a' etc. and it gets a discussion going. But the important thing is to not mention gender, determiner, article, definite article, number, noun and all the "grammar" terms. On the other hand, if someone is comfortable with grammar and grammar terms, then an explicit study of grammar can be used as a shortcut to assimilate language. But it is no replacement for practice.

I agree what you say, David. I would add that when you are teaching a language you should realise that the student doesn't need to learn grammar, but to acquire communication skills.
Nowadays, to focus on grammar is a very old fashioned teaching style, appropriate to teach Latin or ancient Greek, but useless to teach English, Spanish or a living language. Fortunately, things have changed a lot since the sixties, when enfoques comunicativos and enfoques nocio-funcionales started to spread out the world.

I would really appreciate some help with the phrases I highlighted in black. How do you say this in English? They are technical terms. I don't think it will be enough to attempt a literal translation. What I'm looking for are the current terms used in language teaching.

Thanks a lot in advance.

I'm not a teacher, but I think some of the information below is helpful. Perhaps you can use the translations alone in your further research.

Enfoque Comunicativo
The communicative approach has its origins in a view of language and of grammar as descriptive rather than prescriptive. In other words, a view which sees language as continuously evolving, with the consequent freeing up of judgmental attitudes about what is "wrong" and "right."

Enfoque Socio-funcional
A socio-functional approach to 'acquiring' a language deals in learning how society functions and how to function in it.

Excellent translations Rusty, I think those are the correct terms.

... or a living language.
... or a language that is alive.

I agree with what you say Alfonso. Acquiring communication skills is the goal of language learning/teaching, not a theoretical understanding of grammar. Have you read any of Steven Krashen's work-- the Monitor theory, the i+1 theory and his view on language acquisition? If you haven't, you'd probably find him quite intriguing.

Thanks a lot, Rusty and David, for your answers.

Of course, Krashem is one of the greats. I think his theory that distinguish acquisition from learning is in the root of communicative approach.

Thanks a lot for your translations, Rusty. I gather that communicative approach is exactly the term I was looking for. But the other one you say is more in the field of pragmatics that in the nuance of the enfoque nocio-funcional. It's not socio-funcional but nocio-funcional what I meant. I'll try to find something similar.

Thanks a lot.