{"id":217,"date":"2016-04-23T13:25:35","date_gmt":"2016-04-23T08:55:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.iam-afghanistan.org\/lcp\/?p=217"},"modified":"2016-01-30T14:57:19","modified_gmt":"2016-01-30T10:27:19","slug":"whats-our-goal-in-learning-grammar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iam-afghanistan.org\/lcp\/2016\/04\/23\/whats-our-goal-in-learning-grammar\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s our goal in learning grammar?"},"content":{"rendered":"

My last post was about strategies for learning vocabulary<\/a>. With this post I\u2019d like to talk about learning grammar. In the vocab post, I shared a lot of ideas from a blog post that solicited various opinions. Interestingly, the same blog has another selection of opinions about learning grammar<\/a>, which are notably more diverse. Grammar-learning is a controversial subject. In fact, I decided it was necessary to have a whole post just on what we mean by \u201clearning grammar.\u201d<\/p>\n

Our goal is clear and accurate speech and accurate understanding<\/strong><\/p>\n

I want you to speak correctly and<\/em> fluently. I want you to understand completely and<\/em> fluently.<\/p>\n

Some people are paralyzed by the need to speak correctly: they just seize up. If that\u2019s you, then loosen up a bit. Let yourself make a few mistakes\u2014you can learn from them.<\/p>\n

Other people speak fluently from the beginning, accuracy be damned. If that\u2019s you, you should be cautious about letting bad habits fossilize. Make the effort to speak correctly<\/em> as well as fluently<\/p>\n

The goal is to understand and produce, not to know about<\/em> grammar<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you can understand and speak the language correctly, then you\u2019re done. Stop reading this. I have nothing more for you. You don\u2019t need grammar.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re having trouble speaking and listening, you probably need to learn grammar. But you need to internalize the grammar, not study it explicitly. To understand that contrast, here is a sentence about<\/em> Dari grammar:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cThe subjunctive is used as a dependent complement of the independent verbs kh\u00e2stan<\/em> \u2018to want,\u2019 tav\u00e2nestan<\/em> \u2018to be able\u2019 and gozashtan<\/em> \u2018to allow, let.\u2019\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It doesn\u2019t really matter in the least whether you understood that. On the other hand, you do<\/em> need to be able to fill in the blank below.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to go.\u201d ma mex\u028cj\u028am _______.<\/p>\n

If you can\u2019t fill in that blank, you need to study grammar. You can get a book about Dari grammar (like the Glassman book), or you can sit down with a teacher and just try to figure it out.<\/p>\n

An inductive approach is the best way<\/strong><\/p>\n

The ideal is to learn the grammar inductively, without reading a book about grammar. We hope that this goes on during the Long Course. The goal is that the language \u201csound right\u201d to you. It should eventually just come out by itself.<\/p>\n

But the inductive approach is not the only approach, and we have grammatical resources (like the Glassman book) to give explicit instruction. Always remember that explicit instruction is a means to an end: to help you internalize the grammar. It\u2019s not an end in itself.<\/p>\n

Some limited rote repetition is probably necessary<\/strong><\/p>\n

At some point, I\u2019m sure that I practiced verb agreement by rote: [ma mij\u028cj\u028am, tu mij\u028cji, u mij\u028cja, m\u028c mij\u028cjem, \u0283\u028ama mij\u028cjen, un\u028c mij\u028cjand; ma raft\u028am, tu rafti, u raft, m\u028c raftem\u2026.] \u2014 and on and on. If you\u2019re learning about the perfect subjunctive for the first time, I recommend that you produce twenty or thirty perfect subjunctives to practice.<\/p>\n

But again, this is only needed to beat the forms into your brain. You should be able to leave off the drills fairly quickly and use it in the real world. I do not recommend that you do drills with a language teacher.<\/em> Find a foreign friend and practice with him\/her if you need the correction. Use native speakers to practice fluency.<\/p>\n

\n

The grammar example is from Wheeler M. Thackston\u2019s An Introduction to Persian, 3rd<\/sup> ed.<\/em>, pg. 112. It\u2019s the best book on Persian grammar I\u2019ve found, and I\u2019ve learned a great deal from it.<\/p>\n

[ma mex\u028cj\u028am b\u028ar\u028am<\/em>], if you weren\u2019t sure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My last post was about strategies for learning vocabulary. With this post I\u2019d like to talk about learning grammar. In the vocab post, I shared a lot of ideas from a blog post that solicited various opinions. Interestingly, the same blog has another selection of opinions about learning grammar, which are notably more diverse. Grammar-learning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-goals","category-learning-about-learning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iam-afghanistan.org\/lcp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iam-afghanistan.org\/lcp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iam-afghanistan.org\/lcp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iam-afghanistan.org\/lcp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iam-afghanistan.org\/lcp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.iam-afghanistan.org\/lcp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":220,"href":"https:\/\/www.iam-afghanistan.org\/lcp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions\/220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iam-afghanistan.org\/lcp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iam-afghanistan.org\/lcp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iam-afghanistan.org\/lcp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}