Is grammar really that important?
Is grammar really that important? Something to think about.
40 Answers
I can throw my 2 cents worth, based on my own experience.
I consider myself a fluent speaker and writer of both English and Spanish. I use both languages constantly every day. However, you'll notice that I hardly ever touch Forum questions that are purely about grammar. The reason for that is that I know very little grammar!
I know how to use both languages fairly well. I can construct grammatically correct sentences, I can differentiate a good piece of writing (or a good speech) from a bad one, I can correct spelling and grammar errors (in both languages), and I can even write a bit of poetry, if fancy strikes. Just don't ask me to explain how it works, because I don't know!
Did I study grammar at school? You bet! Primay school, high-school, Community College, University.... There's no language course anywhere that I have been that doesn't drill grammar to death from terminal boredom!
Did I ever remember any of it beyond the day of the test that required it? Nope!
I don't think about how my words and sentences are structured any more than I think about the myriad of extremely complicated things that are happening constantly as I drive my car: "Ok, I wish reach that corner on the left. Very well: I shall actuate the accelerator pedal by 1.5", which will in turn move the throttle cable about .25". This will cause the throttle to open up a radius of about 15º, which will increase the amount of air entering the inlet manifold by 10%. In response, the engine's CPU will direct an increased flow of 2CC to the fuel injectors..." and so forth until next morning, and I still haven't move my car just thinking about all the processes.
I step on the gas, grab hold of the steering wheel, and go for it, competently and hopefully without any mishaps. I walk from one place to the other without thinking about sending signals to my muscles, and the adjustments required to keep my balance.
And I speak, or write, smoothly and automatically just to express my thoughts. There's a "right way" and a "wrong way" to do it, depending on where I am and who is with me, but I never think about why it is the way I'm doing it.
So, by all means, study grammar if you need or want to know why things work a given way. But in my opinion, the way to learning the practical side of a language is, not surprisingly, just practice. Read, speak, listen, interact. And while you're doing that, try to forget about grammar.
You can't immerse yourself fully in a movie and enjoy the moment if you're concentrated on how the scene is constructed, all the camera angles, the color choices, the soundtrack synch, the type of film being used, and all the other technical aspects. Works the same way with language and grammar theory.
When I first took a course to teach English I was asked the same question.
"Is grammar important when teaching / learning English?"
My answer was no.
But I have changed my opinion.
Why?
Well, I look at this way.
Many people can play music "by ear" but those that can read music can play anything - even create new music. Grammar is to language what music scores are to music.
Knowledge of grammar can help us understand more complex things.
By the way I have not looked at the links because my connection is too slow.
Let's not confuse grammar with speaking correctly: many people who studied English as a second language know their grammar very well, but still make mistakes, and many natives of English who know nothing about grammar speak perfect English.
Grammar is a set of rules that deal mainly with syntax, morphology and orthography. For example: the definite article in English is used to talk about geographical points of the globe. Most speakers all overy the world do not know these rules at all, even though they use them correctly when they speak. Only someone who teaches his/her own language to foreigners is likely to have some idea about grammar. People don't use grammar to talk or to communicate; only to use correct punctuation and spelling, and sometimes, to ensure that the syntax of a formal document is correct.
but you will never achieve well-spoken native level with bad grammar.
More than 400 million natives already did... without any grammar at all, so why can't you? I know people who came to Spain at the age of 14 or 16, speaking no Spanish, and after a year or two going to a normal school, without learning grammar, their Spanish was perfect. While some people learn with grammar and their progress is amazing, some of the best examples of perfect Spanish from foreigners were people who didn't even like reading grammars. And they never make mistakes with subjunctive or past tenses, say.
Summing up, you can:
- Speak perfectly without any grammar.
- Speak really bad even though you know the grammar.
- Speak perfectly knowing your grammar.
How can you speak correctly not considering grammar? Even natives can have bad grammar that doesn't mean that they speak correctly.
I don't mean studying, I mean know how to say it correctly just because you know. -
The thing is, what does it mean "to speak correctly"?
For one thing, grammar is a relatively new invention for humanity. A few hundred years ago, hardly anyone in the world wrote, and those who did, didn't have a very rigidly structured set of rules to follow. If read antique English or Spanish text, we see that different writers may have different ways to write words and put sentences together.
Even a hundred years ago, very few people actually went to school, and even fewer received anything beyond primary education. For most of these people, "grammar" would only mean "your parent's mother", as Webdunce and Cristalino pointed out. Does it mean that they couldn't speak correctly?
And what about people who have never heard of writing, or have had a formal education of any sort? Are the peoples of the deep Amazon unable to speak their language correctly, because they do not study grammar?
I think if you speak like the others around you speak, and are able to communicate your thoughts adequately, then you're speaking correctly, regardless of whether you can tell the difference between "Grammar" and "Grandma" or not!
I think it's not important if the aim is learning to speak a language.
To me, grammar is very interesting. I think understanding grammar in your own language gives you facilities for learning another languages, and helps to express yourself clearly, especially writing.
Unfortunatelly, in my case, understanding grammar doesn't happen in real time, when I'm talking.
I'd say it all depends on what you are looking for. If you don't mind being looked upon as a clod, then grammer don't matter any much. If you are okay with speaking spanish like a 1st grader then it don't worry about it none.
Is grammar important? Well, I suppose it depends on exactly how you mean it. It is important that one's speech is grammatally correct, but it is not necessary to know the "name" of every tense and every rule. People who call themselves "Intuitive" speakers really do know the grammar rules, even if they can't cite them. I remember when we were taught grammar in elementary school. We had drill after drill of senteces where we had to choose the "correct" word. We weren't told the name of the tense or the rule, but we learned by example and by reading aloud the proper grammar conventions.
I was an English major (and have a nursing degree) and even THEN I wasn't taught the names of the tenses. I didn't learn them in English until I had to learn them in Spanish and had to figure out which is which. In reality, I don't think the drilling within the different tenses did me as much good as just listening and repeating or reading aloud the Spanish with the English translations next to them.
My Spanish is to a point where certain things "sound right" to me, and I'm SO happy about that because it means that I'm STARTING to internalize some of this language and don't have to constantly run the charts through my mind while I'm trying to talk.
I'd be interested to see what Lazarus thinks about this.
Grammar is a set of rules that was developed after the language existed and is usually taught to children to explain what they already know how to do. For example, I had been using the various forms of be for years before they were formally taught to me in grammar school. Similarly, children are usually taught to read things they already know how to say. Students learning a foreign language usually do things in the reverse order: they learn grammar rules before they know what very many words mean and often learn to read before they learn to speak. This is largely due to the fact that they already know another language, and learning by analogy is often the easiest path.
When comparing a language to music, reading music is like reading a language. Grammar is like music theory--a lot of good music has been written by people who never studied species counterpoint, have never heard of Schenkerian analysis, and cannot read figured bass. Like grammar, music theory was developed to analyze "good" music more than as an aid in composition.
Well, I think you know me as a guy who is very interested in grammar, right? I can tell you that I am not aware of any grammar when I am talking. I don't use it to talk, read or understand; only when I stop to analyse whether something is correct and why, but never for real-time, natural input and output.
You have to be very careful with the grammar. If you intend to use correctly the past tenses in Spanish, for example, and then you have to ask yourself "Mmmm, according to the acronym, I use imperfect for this, that, that, and that, so in this situation, since I want to express this, maybe I should chose this tense; however, according to rule number 7 for preterite, it also makes sense..." At that time, the native of Spanish who was listening to you gets bored of waiting for you to decide how to complete your sentence grammatically correct. That method is pointless, if you ask me. Grammar can help you only once you at least understand more or less the language, not before.
What percentage of natives of a language know the grammar of their language? I guess less than 0.001%. How many of them speak fluently? Nearly 100%. Is grammar really that necessary?
I will just answer from my own experience since I am not trained in language teaching. I have found that I need to know the grammar first. I need to see some kind of structure on which to hang all these new vocabulary words I am learning, and that structure is grammar. However I understand that not all people learn like me and immersion learning is fine for them. Not for me. Grammar please.
I agree that I learned my first language without learning the grammar first and I was speaking it fairly well by the time I started school when I was six years old. But, then I did not know how to read or write in my language and the next 12 years of school were spent refining my knowledge of English, so that my speaking, reading and writing were at a level ready for college. That refining included many grammar lessons. Now, as I learn Spanish, I find that I need to know some grammar rules. I didn't have the six years of fluency for Spanish that I had as a child to start with, so I needed to start with some grammar as well as Spanish lessons here on SD. If I could go live in a Spanish country or have the privilege of being able to speak daily with Spanish people, I might not need to use college courses to advance my Spanish. However, this is the only way that I can see a way to improve my Spanish and it does include grammar.
I am going to risk a bit of redundancy in this. If I am on a project with the masons building a foundation I am going to speak with them in their vernacular, correct or not. If I give a training class to mechanics and technicians, I am going to "lard up" the presentation with engineering jargon and all the language shortcuts engineers use to minimize the words needed to express the point. If I am in a party with my middle class friends I will follow their speech patterns,again correct or not. But now where grammar is important, if I present a paper or a class in the university I will triple check the grammar and syntax to the best of my ability. I think I stand with Lazarus in this if i read him correctly, it would seem to me out of place to take the time to think in perfect grammar in all but one of the above situations. We must all be parrots when the need arises.
I think that it depends on the purpose.
To me, the study of grammar is something of a novelty or diversion, a diversion which I often take great pleasure in studying; however, I do not take much stock in the study of grammar as means of bettering one's communicative abilities.
Just to clarify, I mean that learning grammar rules can certainly help to make one more cognizant of and appreciate more the various intricacies of a language, and to a certain extent can probably even improve a person's formal writing abilities, but I doubt that the systematic study of grammar does much in the way of improving one's ability to communicate, especially when it comes to speaking. This, to me is the bottom line when it comes to to question of importance—does it improve a person's ability to communicate.
I think the single most important factor in terms of learning a language—any language—lies in observation and emulation. The reason I say this is that you can drill grammar rules until the cows come home, but a child will still generally develop speaking patterns consistent with the manner of speech inherent to their peers (with some influence also being exhibited by the child's parents). On the other hand, I think that writing ability, has more to do with the amount of printed material one has absorbed. I think that this can be made evident from the fact that a well-read child may exhibit exemplary writing abilities yet still only be able to communicate orally on the level of his peers.
In teaching a language, then, I think that it would be much more effective to expose the learner to as much of the language as possible in a manner which would provide as much stimulation as possible for the learner's observational abilities. That is, I think that it would be much more effective, especially early on, to expose the learner to the language rich in visual context, and that it would be best to have the person presenting the language at least have a sympathetic attitude towards the person learning the language.
In short, no. In terms of learning a language, I do not think that the systematic study of grammar is the best way to improve one's ability to communicate in that language. Furthermore, I believe that such systematic study which focuses so heavily on grammar drills rather than on actual communication and observation might even be a bit detrimental in the long run.
Again, this is not to say that the study of grammar has no merit, just that it is often overemphasized in the pursuit of learning a language.
Anyway, that's just one man's opinion.
For one thing, grammar is a relatively new invention for humanity. A few hundred years ago, hardly anyone in the world wrote, and those who did, didn't have a very rigidly structured set of rules to follow.
It is true that it is a relatively new concept, but not just a few hundred years. You see, most of the modern grammatical terminology (gerund, etc.) comes from Latin and Greek grammars (the word grammar is Greek) over 2 millennia ago. Sanskrit has one of the oldest grammars we know of (Panini's grammar had nearly 4000 rules). Lots of grammars had been developed in many countries before the first millennium A.D.
How can you speak correctly not considering grammar? Even natives can have bad grammar that doesn't mean that they speak correctly.
Are you telling me that people capable of improvising an excellent speech in public is going over more of 10,000 rules for every word they try to say... in real time? So, before saying "Dear friends,...", surely this person thought first: "This is a non-restrictive adjective that modifies a discrete countable noun, which does not require the presence of further modifiers because if I use it in plural". This, my friend, is called grammar, and it only makes sense when you compare many languages, especially if they are different. No, there have been great writers and orators who never learnt a single rule of grammar, because they already can speak the language perfectly.
Yes, unless you want to sound like this:
Four year ago I want car white big for birthday when live in the state over there.
I believe that you are probably more likely to arrive at something like the "sentence" above by following a grammar intensive approach than you would if you were to simply follow a method which instead focused on listening to and reading the target language with abundant visual context.
For one thing, by following a modeling approach, you are likely never to hear such an utterance as "car white big." Having had some experience when it comes to child rearing, I can say that I have never heard any of my children (nor any child that I have been around) utter anything resembling the atrocity described above. I have, however, seen similar constructions from those in the process learning a language "grammar first."
On the other hand, what I have noticed from those learning by a more natural "modeling method" is a gradual building up of the language. That is, the language is learned in manageable chunks until more and more complex ideas are able to be expressed. For example, the reason you would likely never hear something like the "car white big" (as it appears in the "sentence" above) from someone who is modeling their speech patterns after a competent speaker (or writer) is that (1) they would never have been subjected to such a mistake, and (2) by the time they had reached the level of sophistication required to form such a long sentence, the person would have already cemented in their minds the proper form of each of the "blocks" which would have comprised the sentence.
Again, that is not to say that I find grammar unimportant. I don't. I just think that it is often overemphasized and taught in an impractical manner. When learning a foreign language, the key component that is often overlooked or "undertaught" is usage. Teaching by a grammar first approach (in terms of a second language which in ) foments in the learner the idea that a language can be understood simply by knowing how nondescript pieces fit together in a sentence, but does nothing to explain the countless idiomatic exceptions. Even worse, the learner becomes limited in that they are expected to produce speech or writing long before they have been exposed to enough of the language to do so. As a result, rather than learning to "think like a native," the learner is forced to build their understanding of the new language upon the framework of their old language, a process that is more likely to lead to a dependence on "translation" and one which is very difficult to unlearn.
If you consider each grammatical relationship to be a particular type of puzzle piece then perhaps it would be easy to be fooled into thinking that once you understand how the pieces might fit together it is a simple matter to put the puzzle together. However, I suspect that it is much simpler to put a puzzle together if you also are also familiar with what the puzzle actually looks like. In this case, I think that by being exposed to the language in terms of actual usage (rather than grammar rules) it allows us to gradually build up the size of the puzzle we are able to complete because we actually have an idea of what the finished picture looks like. More importantly, the complexity of the puzzle pieces (the grammatical relationships) only increases when we have had sufficient experience with less complex puzzles.
My own opinion, as I said earlier is that grammar is not wholly unimportant, but I do think that it would probably be better to hold off on teaching such intricacies of grammar until the person is of sufficient ability to be taught the rules in the target language itself.
I know that there are bound to be objections to the ideas that I have presented, but in my opinion (based on what I have witnessed in many teens who have taken 4+ years of Spanish or another foreign language), I think that teaching by a grammar first approach is largely a failure considering that many of these students are often hard-pressed to even compose a simple sentence without stumbling, stuttering and cross checking what they want to say with their native tongue. I am just of the opinion that 4 years of study would be better spent and would provide a better foundation if (at least early on) more time were spent by the students being spoken to and led around in the language, playing simple games in the language and just listening and taking in as much of the language as possible while being provided ample visual cues to form connections within the learner's brain between the language itself and the concepts meant to be conveyed by the language. In any case, just my opinion.
