Is Grammar Useful If You're Learning To Speak A Language?

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Ferdinand De Saussure's Course in General Linguistics begins with an unambiguous and uncompromising statement. He describes grammar as a discipline with a narrow outlook. Grammar is completely detached from the objective observation of language facts and totally abstracted from human relationships. It is foreign to the social and psychological dynamics that influence language facts. Grammar is not based on science. It is exclusively based on logic, and it merely differentiates between correct and incorrect forms in the standard variety of languages.

So, is grammar any useful? Yes. As De Saussure said, it still tells you though superficially what is correct and what is not. However, the extent of its usefulness has been greatly stretched beyond its scopes by language teachers.

Regardless of the fact that all learners are different, work on grammar should cover about 15% to 20% of a language learner's time learning a language, and that's only in the beginning stages of language learning. As the learner moves on to more advanced phases and picks up more vocabulary, time spent on grammar should be gradually reduced to little-to-none by the time students reach a mid-intermediate level.

How should grammar be practiced on, that's a totally different issue altogether.

If you're reading this, you're probably a language learner too. And if you're a language learner, you've probably spent hundreds and hundreds of hours pen-in hand bent down on a textbook filling in gaps, writing conjugated forms, highlighting and memorizing rules, and connecting split sentences with arrows.

So do tell, how's your speaking? Are you satisfied with your ability to understand fluent speech? Can you think directly in Italian (or whatever target language you're working on)? Can you snap a response right off the bat without getting stuck? Can you think directly in Italian (or the target language) when you need to?

If you can't--and you probably can't--here's the truth you need to hear: your language teachers have been wasting your time (and money).

Your primary goal is to speak the language. Grammar exercises have nothing to do with giving you the ability to speak. Your secondary goal is to understand speech at all speeds, pace, rhythms, and accents. Grammar WILL NOT HELP YOU with that. Your third goal is to write decently. Grammar in this case can help perhaps a tiny bit for the only reason that both grammar exercises and writing text involve some of the same mechanics (using pen and paper, or keyboard and computer screen). However, again practicing grammar does not yield the competence required for writing well.

I often hear students say "my teacher is a grammar buff," or "yea, but my teacher loves grammar," or "grammar is her passion." Unfortunately these kinds of teachers have no business teaching a language. In fact, they also quite often manage to teach grammar wrong, and their knowledge does not exceed the few general and superficial rules expounded by a mediocre grammar book.

Therefore, unless your goal is to become a grammarian, you need a different method. You need to deal with grammar differently, and you need to practice in a way that gets you to speak, understand speech, and write.

More on this later.