Let’s Make Language Teaching More Natural

 It’s been a really weird school year. I recently started reading The Nature of Language by Bill VanPatten and it really got my gears going. 

He uses so many analogies that are applicable to those of us who are language teachers, despite the fact that the book is written about language, not language teaching. 

The first analogy that had my mind blown was about stars in the sky. I believed in the fundamental fact that grammar rules are not what wind up in our mental representation, but I never fully grasped what BVP meant when he said that those rules don’t exist. 

I always tried to work it out by thinking, well we teach rules like ser & estar in traditional language classes, but those rules are really not entirely true because I can fully well say ese chico es bonito (that boy is cute) or ese chico está bonito (that boy is cute). There are different implications to both, but the point is that the rule many language teachers teach — ser is for descriptions and estar is for states of being — is not quite true. 

This book took it even further than that. His point related to the stars and how if you look up, you might see the Big Dipper. However, if we were to fly into the sky and get super close, we would no longer see the Big Dipper as we see it from here on Earth. This is because our mind is making meaning of something that is not actually there. It’s almost like a 2D representation of the sky. The same happens when we are learning grammar rules. They are external descriptions of what is in our heads, but they are not real. They are not actually what is in our heads. It’s just an attempt to explain the inexplicable.

A linguistic example that was an aha! moment for me: if I were to say:

*I drived to the store yesterday.*

*I have drived to the store before.*

Any native speaker would know that that sounds wrong. We say:

 I drove to the store yesterday. 

However, if we look at a very similar verb (but less common), it is not quite as simple. 

I strived to do my best.

I strove to do my best.

I have striven to do my best all along.

I have strived to do my best all along.

It’s likely that all of those sound plausible to you. This is because language is so much more complex than what those rules of grammar tell us. 

So what does this mean for language educators?

Well, I think it’s important to note that first language acquisition and second language acquisition are fundamentally the same. Our brains do not acquire infinitive verbs and then use a chart to add verb endings. We acquire the entire word. 

So, when I am using tasks to help my students acquire whatever they’re learning (my goals are content related), I try as hard as I can to get them to focus on the meaning of whole words in context. I never have them practice conjugating; I leave that stuff to the linguists. 

In my Spanish classroom, I am not a linguistics teacher, and I do not believe that there is any benefit in providing grammar exercises when shooting for proficiency. Instead, we use the language for a purpose: to communicate. That is the only thing we use language for in real life, so that’s what I do in my classroom. We use the language to complete tasks.

I have, however, noticed a slight downside to my approach: my first-year students kinda stink at subject pronouns because they don’t see them as often as they see a verb in context. I think that’s an easy fix, though, and either way, it is part of their natural acquisition process. We cannot force what they acquire and what they do not, just like we cannot force a baby to acquire “mama” before “dada.” It just all depends on the input and the child’s need to use the word to make themself understood.  

It’s good to be back,

Timothy