Bad grammar makes me [sic]!

I intend to write more than once about grammar, teaching grammar, learning grammar, etc, etc, as this is a subject that mars my professional life. I mean, I've been repeating the (very simple, this is not rocket science!) rules for concord ad nauseam for 13 years at this academy - and still the cadets don't get it? Of course they are new cadets every year, but still?!

On a more serious note, I often wonder why it is that grammar is so hard to grasp for the cadets. We try to give them a "toolbox", a handful of rules targeting frequent mistakes areas, like concord, it/there, genitive, adverbs/adjectives, who/which etc, so that they should be able to monitor and correct their own language, but I must confess that I am not convinced of the effectiveness of this strategy. (Just managing to write with instead of whit seems to be beyond some learners).

When I was writing my dissertation, I read a lot about Stephen Krashen's theories of language acquisition, and was utterly convinced of his input + 1 thesis (if you are exposed to slightly more complex language than your present level of competence, your brain will "make up the difference", and your competence will develop automatically), and we also have a "monitor", an innate ability to check our own output (parole) against the language system (langue) that will, with exposure to enough language help us speak and write with increasing skill and correctness.

Krashen was criticised by many for being too vague and too optimistic. I still think there is a lot of truth in his theories, even if they have not been sufficiently substantiated. However, most young Norwegians have since childhood been exposed to enormous amounts of English language, in tv, films, music, internet and so on - so the input side of things should be taken care of. Still their performance/parole in many cases has ample room for improvement, and my humble opinion here is that they have never, or at least very infrequently, focussed on language as a system, with rules and conventions, but primarlily on language as meaning. Of course the main point of language is to convey information of various kinds, to be understood, to give out meaning, but for second language learners it must be essential to keep an eye on the standard of their language so that they do not just avoid being misunderstood, but are actually understood. This concludes my musings today. More later.

(pictures courtesy of www.onehorseshy.com and Flickr)