I have pretty much jumped on board with Freeman and Freeman's ideas about taking a sociopsycholinguistic approach to teaching reading. I have been excited about almost everything they say regarding that theory, so I was surprised to realize that I sort of had a "word recognition/learning" approach to thinking about morphology up until I read these chapters. I always sort of thought (without really thinking deeply about it) that learning grammar was a necessary part of a well-rounded education, and that memorizing morphemes and various root words was the way to expand your vocabulary. But really, this goes against my own grammar acquisition experiences. I think I nearly always use very good English grammar, but I don't sit and consider whether my clauses are dependent or independent while I'm writing, or overly analyze my verb tenses. And in fact, I didn't even understand dependent and independent clauses until I was in grad school... but I always knew what "sounded right". In my estimation, that shows I am living proof that a sociopsycholinguistic way of thinking is accurate. ;)
Reshaping my thinking about morphology and grammar teaching according to an acquisition viewpoint makes me think that Freeman and Freeman make a really great point that grammar instruction in grade school is pretty ridiculous. I was amazed as they went through all the different morphemes and explained the complexity and the difficulty of actually using root words and word parts to get meaning from new vocab. I got confused as a native English speaker, even though they were explaining it explicitly!
Now, I don't think that grammar instruction is totally pointless - I am convinced that at this time in my life, direct grammar instruction has given me a better understanding of language acquisition and the teaching implications of grammar. But as a kid, it truly didn't matter whether I understood adverbs, adjectives, nouns, etc... I could use them correctly, and that was what really counted.
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I was amazed that graders went through all different morphemes too. I remembered back home, I once began the book introducing all kind of prefixes, roots, and suffixes of English but after few days, I quit that study because some roots has always many exceptional meanings. My brain didn't work well with these exception...=D
ReplyDeleteHi Carly, I also think native speakers tend to acquire the language holistically which meets with the sociopsycholinguistic way of thinking, while non native speakers will pay more attention to the language mechanics.
ReplyDeleteBoth Lillian and Leping make excellent points. Certainly, grammar could be beneficial for ESL learners. However, as much as possible, they should be meaningful.
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