It is interesting to read claims on the web that the traditional grammar-based language teaching model is “under attack,” when nearly everyone still subscribes to this archaic approach. The vast majority of language classrooms, whether in high schools, universities, or private language schools, still spend most class hours teaching and testing explicit information such as grammar rules and lexical items out of context.
I read a blog post a while back that claimed the following:
“Anything students need to know has to be taught, not caught.”
This soundbite seems logical, but it underpins the major misconception widely on display in traditional language classrooms and programs: the notion that languages can be taught. The truth is that languages can only be “acquired,” not taught. Human language is a physical skill akin to walking. Parents and schools did not “teach” you how to walk; you figured it out through trial and error. Language ability is the same; you did not learn how to speak English because your parents or teachers taught you about “subjects” and “predicates,” the meaning of Latin or Greek word roots, or English case inflections. Many schools, educators, and parents have believe in the faulty notion that we have to teach children their language, when in reality, they will acquire the language around them automatically given sufficient input and chances to practice output.
The exception to this stance is writing, a human technology that does indeed need to be taught. Writing is a skill that requires massive amounts of reading input, and an equally massive amount of writing output. Having a teacher to give feedback on readability, mechanics, style, and writing conventions does help significantly.
One last thing: Perhaps the biggest reason grammar-based language teaching remains so common (despite disastrous results), is good old fashioned business. There is a lot of money to be made selling books, training teachers, running conferences, preparing students for tests, and selling cram school tuitions.
I agree wholeheartedly. In fact, I was recently reading up on classical style education was taken aback when proponents of classical education sneer at pretty much any creative way of looking at something. I mostly have “absorbed” my languages through novels and media (French, Spanish, some Italian, some Dutch), so there you go!
I think “test culture” is a general problem of modern society; we put too much emphasis on courses, tests, certifications as a proxy for competency. You’re supposed not to try to do anything before spending years in preparation (and shelling tons of money), which is miscalled “education”. There’s this sense that one should not not even try to e.g. read Voltaire without first submitting to five years of banalities about how to ask for directions to the post office. And all this time one could be reading Voltaire from the very start (or reading Asterix, or chatting up boys in Paris, or whatever it is that you want to do with the language).
I think it’s our mission to actively undermine test culture. Instead of evaluating people on tests, we should evaluate them on real work (e.g. instead of TOEFL scores, look at their English-language weblog or something). And instead of giving language learners a set course to follow, we should help them find compelling input, and *then* help them make sense of it. That is, instead of teaching a grammatical pattern, and then citing an example from Harry Potter, we help them read Harry Potter, and then elucidate the grammatical pattern when it comes up ~and~ they’re ready to question it.
The counter-intuitive point is that you have to encourage students to forgo perfection and accept partial understanding (as Kató Lomb puts it, “It’s much more of a problem if the book becomes flavourless in our hands due to the many interruptions than not learning if the inspector watches the murderer from behind a blackthorn or a hawthorn”). In this, too, the problem is to fight test culture: you’re not being graded, relax and enjoy it.
Yes, yes, yes! I could not agree more.