{"id":273,"date":"2020-09-02T18:21:48","date_gmt":"2020-09-02T18:21:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.vox-sprachschule.ch\/?p=273"},"modified":"2022-02-04T09:35:09","modified_gmt":"2022-02-04T09:35:09","slug":"grammar-shaming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vox-sprachschule.ch\/blog\/2020\/09\/grammar-shaming\/","title":{"rendered":"Grammar Shaming"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I was talking to a colleague from university (a brilliant postdoc in literature) about a student of mine who did not know\u2014or did not recognize among a few examples\u2014what an article, such as <em>the <\/em>or <em>a<\/em>, was: \u201cOh, I have never heard of prepositions or verbs or those other things you mentioned, but I think I know this one, the article: It is like when you hear the news\u2026 No, sorry, read, like\u2026 in a paper.\u201d My colleague was speechless, and we both agreed it was actually basic primary school knowledge, so I ended up asking myself \u201cHow are people like that even supposed to learn a language?\u201d, and \u201cHow could I possibly teach them a language?\u201d. Plus, my colleague and I both hate replying with \u201cIt is like when\u2026\u201d: If I ask you \u201cWhat is a <em>noun<\/em>?\u201d, the only possible correct answer is bound to contain the structure \u201cIt is a <em>noun<\/em>\u201d (not \u201cIt is like when \u2026\u201d or anything of the sort). I remembered, as well, the question asked by one of my professors when I told him that I taught German classes and many students would not know what cases were. \u201cHow can you teach German to someone who ignores the concept of case?\u201d. To us, \u201cthe linguists\u201d, these are \u201cprimary school basics\u201d. During our little complaining session, another colleague, though, who was sitting next to us, quickly turned around and said \u201cCome on, stop the grammar shaming, it is not nice, and not everyone is supposed to know what an article is\u2014I wouldn\u2019t know either if I wasn\u2019t a literature student.\u201d How right she was. I felt very bad and ashamed of myself; I thought about it all night and the day after\u2026 I found out that <em>grammar shaming<\/em> actually exists as a form of <em>shaming<\/em>\u2014and it was exactly what I was doing. Me, the teacher who teaches \u201cpeople who ignore what cases are\u201d and is actually happy and proud to take A1 courses because she finds teaching the basics much more interesting\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, I am just a human being, I guess, and as such I am more judgmental than I would like to admit\u2014even if I try not to be. Anyway, this episode was a good reminder that I should not take anything for granted when I walk into a classroom, and that there is no shame in not knowing things. I remember too well how I felt when my boyfriend looked at me as if I was an alien, laughed at me, and said, sarcastically: \u201cEhm, what? You don\u2019t know how to solve this?! You must be kidding\u2026 I mean, seriously\u2026 This is basic general knowledge!!!.\u201d Well no, it was not. Not to me, since it was programming (and I had been programming for 2 weeks back then), and I had a master\u2019s degree in Ancient Greek, thank you very much. Such discussions would take place and still take place quite often, come to think of it. My natural reaction would be to study and learn, and study and learn, and study and learn, in order not to feel that mix of shame and guilt and insecurity\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But then again, we are only humans and thus cannot be experts in every field of what is \u201clearnable\u201d. Of course, there are people who learn better \u201cby heart\u201d or only through examples and react allergically to any general grammar notion. Nevertheless, it can be a good thing to spend a little time and energy and try to learn at least some of the basics. Why? Because it saves time and frustration, both for students and teachers. First of all, if we all \u201cspeak the same language\u201d, further explanations will become easier. If your teacher says \u201cCareful, we are talking about the past, but you are using the verb in the present tense\u201d, but you don\u2019t have any idea what verb, tense, present, or past mean, this remark won\u2019t help you at all, and you wouldn\u2019t even understand what your mistake was. Most importantly, though, is that the language, any language, is a system that has more or fewer rules. Like in a game, say, chess (this is not a random example, and if you are interested in it, google \u201cDe Saussure language chess\u201d): If you don\u2019t have any clue of the rules, you cannot play, you will just be moving pieces desperately instead, or\u2026 not making any moves at all; nothing would make sense to you\u2014or to the other player, regardless of whether they know how to play or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Another advantage of knowing the basics of grammar is that they are transversally present in many languages: They are mostly categories, principles. While you might not be able to see them sometimes, that doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019re not present (e.g. the popular \u201cLeave me alone with that accusative; in English we don\u2019t have direct objects!\u201d). Knowing what things are or might be is relaxing and helps you understand the new rules or the new system more quickly. Imagine you are in front of a new board game you don\u2019t know, but you recognize it has dice: You will probably start with that\u2014and it would feel nice, as in: \u201cOkay, I don\u2019t know what it means in this game, but I will probably have to roll the dice at some point and find a correspondent question, player, number of steps to go\u2026\u201d. I must say, many school systems fail to provide their students with the \u201cprimary school basics\u201d of grammar. After I explained the concept of articles to my student, she asked me with a very upset expression: \u201cWhy, oh why did no one teach me this before?!\u201d. Another reason why you should never feel ashamed and I should never grammar shame anyone\u2026 Not knowing is never a fault, especially when no one has ever told you! Learning (and teaching) a foreign language can be a very good opportunity to fill the gaps. There is no shame in learning the basics of grammar, and that could be the key, the real skeleton key (or passkey) to any language as well as a happy, more relaxed, and more conscious learning experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They say the more languages you speak, the more you will learn, and think about vocabulary in particular. However, the underlying structures, the rules, having a clue of how things usually work, or what they are called, are an even greater help. Find the rules, break the system\u2014the code, to use a term from the linguistics\u2014; break it once, and it will be easier the next time. It is impossible to learn everything by heart, but learn the rules and how they work (if not why), and you will save a lot of energy and spare yourself a lot of frustration. Learn once that German can combine words in order to make new ones, and that in the process the \u201cmost important part\u201d (semantically and grammatically) is the last one, and you will increase your vocabulary by 300%. Very few words will sound weird, and you will never think again that German has very long, incomprehensible words: Just break them down into pieces that you know. Maybe you won\u2019t recognize all of the pieces, but what you already know will usually be enough (and if not, you will at least know which \u201cpart\u201d you still need to learn or look up in a dictionary). Find out what Lego pieces you have in the language and how they can or cannot be combined. Once you\u2019re done, you will just need to try and become good at guessing what you do not know yet\u2026 and you already are, we all are, because\u2014here comes the good news\u2014languages are not just any systems, but they are \u201chuman\u201d systems, i.e. they were created by humans who followed a logic, a human logic, so any human would be able to learn any language. A specific language is just the product of an innate, inherited ability which is shared by every human being: the ability to speak and talk. Now, which language you end up learning or speaking is just a matter of geography. So, no more excuses like \u201cI was not born to learn German, Russian, Italian etc.\u201d, and no more grammar shaming.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was talking to a colleague from university (a brilliant postdoc in literature) about a student of mine who did not know\u2014or did not recognize among a few examples\u2014what an article, such as the or a, was: \u201cOh, I have never heard of prepositions or verbs or those other things you mentioned, but I think&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":280,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[62],"class_list":["post-273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-german"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.vox-sprachschule.ch\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/shutterstock_147642833-scaled.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":62,"user_id":5,"is_guest":0,"slug":"valeminerva","display_name":"Valentina Carlini","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/692512b8254271ba076c8b020c13dc65?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","first_name":"","last_name":"","user_url":"","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vox-sprachschule.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vox-sprachschule.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vox-sprachschule.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vox-sprachschule.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vox-sprachschule.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vox-sprachschule.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":813,"href":"https:\/\/www.vox-sprachschule.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions\/813"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vox-sprachschule.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vox-sprachschule.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vox-sprachschule.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vox-sprachschule.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vox-sprachschule.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}