Didn't turn out to be the case.

Today, I want to talk about grammar and why we shouldn't focus on

grammar in our language learning.

I've mentioned Manfred Spitzer before, a German neuroscientist.

I enjoy listening to him.

It's good for my German and he has many interesting insights.

I was listening to an audio book called Dein Gehirn bist du, talks about

the brain, how you are your brain.

You can't get a brain implant without becoming a different person.

And he says, I'm That the brain is very good at creating patterns,

at recognizing patterns, not very good at remembering details.

That's why we quickly forget the name of someone who we're just introduced to.

However, the bigger picture, the how things relate to each other,

uh, the broader Sort of sense of a network of patterns is what the

brain is designed to create for us so that we can get through our lives.

And he mentions a case of German, German verbs that have ihren, like

spazieren, like to go for a walk, or rasieren, you know, to shave.

They do not use the ge before the past participle.

And if you get a group of Adults or even children and present them

with non verbs that have even in it.

They will automatically not use the prefix ge, whereas most past

participles in German, ge gessen, ge lassen or ge lesen or whatever.

They take a gay as a prefix to the past participle.

So in other words, children have already absorbed this rule.

No adult knows this rule.

I found this very interesting video about German verbs, 19 minutes

long, goes into a lot of detail rules that I was not aware of.

But actually I use German mostly correctly.

No one has ever corrected me.

I've just accumulated enough experience through the massive exposure,

listening and reading in German, that I mostly use it correctly.

And I remember when I was working on a German ship and, uh, the German

crew, of course, I was trying to somehow communicate with them.

And then my major learning activity was studying declension tables.

I thought that was the key to German.

If I could just nail the declension tables, I'd be able to speak.

Didn't turn out to be the case.

In English, children are able to use articles, a, an, the.

There are some children who struggle, but overwhelmingly kids know that

long before they have the benefit of any grammar instruction, on the other

hand, speakers of languages where there are no articles, despite lots

of grammar instruction, struggle.

To use articles because it's not what they're used to.

They haven't enough experience with English to use the articles correctly.

So when I read things like, if we don't have grammar instruction,

we won't be able to speak.

I mean, all languages existed long before anyone wrote down a grammar.

People develop these natural rules of how to use the language by

some kind of a natural process.

They absorb these rules from people around them.

The brain, as I said, as Spitzer said, is very good.

So, we don't need specific grammar instruction or we don't need

very much of it in any case.

So, that's point number one of why we shouldn't focus on grammar.

Point number two is focusing on grammar takes too much time away

from more useful activities.

We should be spending our time Massively listening and reading and

eventually speaking, even with mistakes.

That's where our time should be spent.

But a lot of language instruction focuses on grammar.

Here's this rule.

Here are some examples.

Now we're going to test you on it.

So a lot of time is devoted to grammar and people are caught up in this

desire to ace these grammar rules.

Whereas they should simply be doing a lot of listening and reading because

it takes a lot of time and the more different the language is from

your own, the more time it takes.

And I'll show you my statistics from LingQ.

You know, a language like Romanian, even though the grammar is different

from other Latin or Romance languages, so much of the vocabulary is similar.

And of course it's written in the Latin alphabet that in a very

short period of time, I was able to start conversing in Romanian.

I was able to do a lot of listening and I moved along very quickly.

Whereas in Arabic or even in Persian, which is an Indo European language, and

it's a lot easier than Arabic, it's hard for me to get in a lot of meaningful.

Listening and reading in those languages where the writing system is different.

There's not a lot of common vocabulary.

The structure is very different.

It's not the grammar that prevents me from spending hours and hours of, you know,

enjoyable listening, meaningful listening.

It's my lack of words.

So the vocabulary buildup is the key obstacle, not the fact that I don't

know the details of Arabic grammar.

So we need a lot of time to listen and read and speak.

And we shouldn't be spending that time on grammar instruction.

The third thing that I don't like about a focus on grammar is that

inevitably grammar instruction is connected with tests.

So it's an opportunity for the teacher to teach something over

the book and then test you on it.

So immediately.

You have these tests, these quizzes, you may get them right.

You may remember what you were just taught and you might then forget

it again a little bit later on.

It's not contributing to a gradual development of connections

and patterns in your brain.

But on the other hand, it's creating a lot of tension.

around tests, it's introducing the sense of failure.

It's introducing this idea that you've got to try to nail things

down, which I don't believe is very helpful in language learning.

Uh, you have to let the process take its course, take the time

necessary to learn and not worry about trying to nail down a grammar test.

So, that's the third thing.

The fourth thing, the reason why I'm not a big fan of a focus on grammar

and getting people, you know, worried about grammar is that it introduces what

Crashing calls the effective filter.

In other words, when you go to use the language, now you're

trying to think of rules.

And in the case of German, I can assure you that the rules for the formation

of the past participle of German verbs is not the only thing in the language.

There are lots of rules.

And if every time you go to speak, you got to try to think, is this

correct or is that correct, you have to have the confidence that with

enough listening and reading, you will get most of the things right.

And if you have most of the things right, and if you have enough

vocabulary to do a lot of listening.

You will gradually develop better and better habits.

And it's far better in my view to rely on your habits and your instincts rather

than trying to remember specific rules.

The next reason why I'm not a big fan of grammar instruction is inevitably grammar

instruction focuses on a limited range of content, a limited variety of content.

We focus in on this rule and we have examples of this rule, but every time you

look at the same information, the same.

example or the same rule, the brain is working less and less hard.

This has been demonstrated through magnetic imaging.

So you are actually learning less and less.

You're far better off to be encountering examples of usage patterns.

In a variety of different contexts, in different books, in different audio

books, in different podcasts, in different texts, you've got to spread that around.

You can't just focus in on limited number of rules and examples and

expect that that is going to create the necessary language competence.

It was interesting.

I was listening to a podcast this morning, comparing artificial intelligence, like

chat GPT, to what happens in the brain.

And one of the major differences, and I don't fully understand all this stuff,

but it seems to be that whereas, uh, an AI model through massive millions

of hours of content or text will be able to predict the next word.

Whereas the brain, because it's engaged with a lot of, a variety of

different contexts, ends up being able to predict beyond the next word,

seven or eight words further on.

The brain is engaged with meaning, not just A word that has

appeared in different contexts.

So the greater the variety of context, the broader our scope of ingesting the

language, the firmer we're going to be.

Grammar tends not to do that.

It tends to focus in on specific rules and specific examples.

And finally.

I'm not saying you shouldn't look at grammar.

I found that, uh, this 20 minute video, and I would suggest you go, if you're

doing German, and there are videos on everything for every language, different

aspects of grammar, it's interesting.

I'm not sure that the next time I go to speak German, I want to

be thinking of these rules, but it is a, some form of exposure.

It is interesting.

It's particularly beneficial if you already have a lot of

experience with the language.

You've been exposed to a variety of contexts through listening and

reading, and now you see a rule which hopefully confirms something that you're

vaguely familiar with, or maybe have been doing, or maybe it contributes

to you noticing certain things when you listen and read, and gradually

improving your accuracy in the language.

We all want to be accurate in the language.

It's not that we ignore correct usage.

It's just that in order to get to correct usage, you actually need to spend a

lot of time listening, reading and speaking and less time trying to focus

in on nailing down points of grammar.

And I'll leave you with a couple of videos that I've done in the past on

this issue of vocabulary versus grammar.

And I very much believe that the key to language learning success

is to have a large vocabulary and therefore the ability to do lots of

listening and reading, enjoyable, meaningful listening and reading.

And that will improve your accuracy in speaking in the language.

Thank you for listening.