Chapter 3: Grammar and Writing in Spoken Language Study
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My personal experience
I had the great advantage of growing up in a home in which grammatically correct English was spoken. As I progressed through primary school and on into secondary school, my language ability matured as a result of my home and school environments.
In retrospect I believe that, for the most part, I used proper sentence structure and pronunciation because that is what I heard in my home. However, when I went to school, I needed to learn grammar. I — like probably most of my classmates — did not learn to speak because I studied grammar. Rather, I was able to learn how to do grammar exercises because I already knew how to speak.
Certainly, I learned many important things about English through grammar study. But it was of importance to me only because I had already achieved basic English fluency. I did not learn to speak English as a result of English grammar lessons.
I also took two years of Spanish in secondary school. We started with basic grammar. We wrote exercises every day. But we almost never heard spoken Spanish, much less spoke it ourselves. After secondary school graduation, I could neither speak Spanish nor understand Spanish grammar.
Within 10 years of my secondary school graduation, I spent a year in Paris studying French. I had the great fortune of enrolling in a French language school that emphasized spoken French to the complete exclusion of written exercises. Not only did I learn French grammar — meaning that I learned to use sentences that communicated what I intended to say to a French listener — but because French and Spanish verb construction is similar, I also began to understand the Spanish grammar which made no sense to me in secondary school. Because I could read and write in English, I had no difficulty reading French. It was a simple transfer of knowledge from reading in English to reading in French.
Later, I studied an African language. Because school-based language courses were almost non-existent in that country, all of my language training was done by way of recorded language drills that I adapted from local radio broadcasts. I also had a university student as my language helper. Yet, I learned how to structure a sentence (which is applied grammar) and write in that language much more quickly than had I been studying grammar and writing independently of the spoken language.
Traditional language instruction
Traditional English instruction for non-English-speaking students has reversed the process with poor results. Most English classes teach grammar as a foundation for spoken English.
The quickest way to teach students to read English is to teach them to speak it first. The fastest way to teach them sufficient grammar to pass college entrance exams is to build a foundation by teaching them to speak English fluently. Whenever the process is reversed, it takes a needlessly long time to succeed in teaching grammar and writing skills, much less fluent spoken English.
If you are in a school that is using the Spoken English Learned Quickly lessons and the instructors are also trying to teach supplementary grammar lessons, your progress will be hindered. The fastest way for you to learn excellent English grammar is to learn it while speaking. Every sentence you speak in this Spoken English Learned Quickly course will teach you grammar. When you have repeated the sentences enough times so that they sound correct to you, you will have learned English grammar. The Spoken English Learned Quickly lessons are full of grammar. But the grammar is learned by speaking, not by writing.
Do not misunderstand what I am saying. You cannot speak any language well without knowing its grammar because grammar consists of the rules used to put words together into meaningful sentences. In English, we can use a given number of words to make a statement or ask a question by the way in which we order the words and use inflection. Simply stated, placing the words in the correct order is applied grammar.
The issue is not whether or not you need to know English grammar. English is unintelligible without it. The question is, "How will you learn English grammar best?" I think you will learn English grammar better and faster by learning it as a spoken language.
The best time to study grammar
In Chapter 1, I said that effective spoken English instruction simultaneously trains all of your cognitive and sensory centers of speech. When is the best time to learn that the sentence, "That is a book," is an English statement, and the sentence, "Is that a book?" is an English question? The best time is when you simultaneously learn to speak these two sentences. That would take place while you are learning many other similar sentences so that you will develop a cognitive sense reinforced by motor skill and auditory feedback. You will learn that the order and inflection of the one sentence is a question, while the other is a statement. The sound of the sentence is as much an indicator of its meaning as its written form. Right? Right!
There is also a relationship between good pronunciation and good spelling. I am a poor speller. I understand that I misspell many words because I probably mispronounce them. At some point, everyone who expects to write English well must learn to spell. Yet, it will probably be faster for you to learn good spelling after learning good pronunciation than it will be for you to learn good spelling without being able to speak. In practice, you will learn the spelling of new English words as they are added to the vocabulary of each new lesson.
I am not saying that grammar or spelling are unnecessary. Rather, I am saying that grammar can be taught more effectively — and in less time — by using audio language drills. Teaching grammar by means of spoken language has the great advantage of reinforcing the cognitive learning of grammar while using two additional functions found in normal speech — motor skill feedback and auditory feedback. Teaching grammar as a written exercise does develop cognitive learning, but it reinforces it with visual feedback.
Though visual feedback has some merit, it is outside the context of spoken English. The single reinforcement of visual feedback outside of the spoken English context is far less effective than motor skill feedback and auditory feedback which are both inside the spoken language context. The trade-off is costly and retards progress. Far more is gained when you learn to identify correct grammar by the way a sentence sounds, rather than by the way it looks. Though it would not typically be explained this way, it is also important on a subconscious level that you learn how correct grammar feels. As a function of the proprioceptive sense, a statement produces a certain sequence of sensory feedback from the mouth, tongue, and air passages that feels different than a question.
It would take considerably longer to teach a language student how to write English grammar exercises, and then speak English correctly, than it would to teach the same student to first speak English correctly, and then introduce rules of grammar. This gain would be greatly augmented, however, if the rules of grammar were incorporated into the spoken language lessons themselves as they are in Spoken English Learned Quickly.
If you study spoken English for a year, you will gain a great deal of fluency. With that spoken English fluency, you will have a good understanding of English grammar. If you spend the same amount of time in English grammar study, you will have limited English fluency and will have little practical understanding of English grammar.
That is probably why you are reading this book. You have undoubtedly studied written English for a long time, but you still can't speak English very well.
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