In the years to come, what will you remember from your English lessons? Hopefully it’s something fun and positive. But if you have some negative memories, even then there’s something that makes language learning come alive – emotions.
In fact, you can’t really learn much without being emotionally involved somehow.
When I first meet a potential student, they usually tell me they need more grammar. If only they had a better grammatical knowledge, everything would be alright, they say.
Don’t get me wrong – grammar has its place and it’s something I do in my classes. But beyond grammar and today’s lesson that you attended, what are you doing all this for?
Is your goal really to get better at grammar?
Aren’t you doing all this because you want to travel around the world and use English to get by wherever you go? Or perhaps you want to set up a business where you’ll have clients who speak English?
Or because you want to understand films from the English-speaking world?
Or perhaps you want to make real and lasting friendships with people who don’t speak your language?
Your English lessons are a great way to get started on the way to achieving these goals. If you’re attending a group class at a private language school, for example, then it means you have 9 other people in your group who you can talk to, get to know, and exchange opinions, ideas and perspectives with. On top of this, there’s your teacher, who may have a whole world of different perspectives and thoughts to your own.
But if you see learning languages as pretty much doing grammar, then you’ll miss out on some of the best things you can get from taking a course.
My dance instructor tells me that zouk is all about the connection, and I’ll add it’s the same for learning a language too.
The lessons you’ll remember are those that gave you an emotional experience, hopefully a positive one. And you’ll remember those times you had a special moment with your classmates or your teacher.
So that’s your homework for this week – to step beyond the grammar, and see if you can find out a little more about the others in your course.
To make a connection.
Photo credits
Image: me
That’s very true, David.
Hi Francisco thanks for visiting this blog after I was away for quite some time 🙂
David
ps I have some catching up to do on yours, I can see…
Hi, David!
It’s really nice to see you blogging again!
I couldn’t agree with you more David! I do think that grammar has an import role in English but I believe it is not something that we (learners, me included) should focus at an earlier stage in our learning process if the main purpose of the student is to speak in English, I say this because I see that some students don’t intend to or don’t have the intention to speak English at all, it’s kind of weird, isn’t it, because if we study a language we should use it, speak it.
I’ll take the example of my wife, she doesn’t want to speak English, she wants to read and write better in English, even though I’m trying to convince her to speak it at all costs 🙂
Another thing that I would like to point out about grammar and rules if you allow me to, is what Warren states on his blog: “Many people try to learn English the same way. They reduce English to pieces and instructions, or rules. For them, learning English means memorizing the pieces and rules. And using English becomes a process of trying to remember the pieces and using the rules to correctly assemble them, to “get it right.”
All the best David! Cheers!
Marcelo
Hi Marcelo
It’s great to see you here. You offer a different perspective as you are already proficient at English, amazingly so, but also you want to learn more. In my case it’s my native language, but I am learning French and Czech, and in the future I’ll brush up on my Spanish. So I have a good idea about the challenges learners go through.
The main point I’d like to mention again is that once you have a connection with someone, it doesn’t really matter if you are ‘advanced’ or ‘intermediate’ or whatever level you may be: instead, it’s two people using language to communicate and make a connection 🙂
That’s true, David, well said!
Thanks.
Hi David,
I ´ ve just read your article above. I absolutely agree with you … Can I have a small comment? You wrote about talking in the classroom at language school. It helps to improve… But personally I think that there are dangerous of much mistakes which I can learn from my classmate, aren ´ t there? This is the problem why I don ´ t want to talk to czech in English:-)
Martina
Hi Martina
It all depends – if you are in an English classroom where you are being exposed to English phrasal verbs, idioms, and natural expressions, with feedback from a teacher, then how can that not be effective?
Or you’d prefer to stay at home and make more excuses not to study?
Yeah, a lot of Czechs have told me over the years that they don’t like speaking to each other. Two points on this:
– Why do Czechs continue to spend money on language schools where the course is advertised as being communicative and where you WILL have to speak to each other?
– It’s really more about the Czech mentality. Czechs, at least Prague people, don’t like to communicate with other human beings. The rest of the planet is different and if you can join us, you’ll make more progress 😉