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The benefit of early education
I took several English classes last week, such as "Reading and Listening class," "Advanced English speaking class," "Intermidiate English speaking class" and "English writing class." All of these classes inspired me a lot. I thoroughly enjoyed studying with a teacher.
One of teachers told us an interesting theory. He said we should start to learn a second language by the age of 9, because our listening skills are dwindling down after the age of 10. He also said that if you are over 9(already, unfortunately), you can't master a second language exactly the same way as little children do. According to his theory, there's no difference between the age of 10 and 80 when they study a foreign language. Curious, isn't it? In a way, I think he is right.
My 7-year-old son understands Japanese grammar perfectly. He has never been taught what the Japanese grammar is. When it comes to mother tongues, children don't need to take any grammar classes. They can learn things from people being around.
So, what should adults do for improving English skill? The teacher insisted on just listening.
"Don't waste your time to read grammar books. Listen to music. Listen to people speaking English. You'll get what I want to say," he assured.
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To yuko
Don't think too much of it, because I'm with you. The teacher said that we should not pay attention TOO MUCH to grammar books. We, especially Japanese people, tend to pick up grammar at first and forget to listen. Maybe we need to rely on our listening skill for improving our total English abilities.
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It could be that I've never had a proper grammar lesson since in Canada, it's all just, you listen, you learn type of thing, so nobody really pays much attention to their grammar usage other than the obvious "I AM", "you ARE", "s/he IS".
I totally agree with your teacher though, 'cause while I grew up in Canada, my parents didn't, and it sometimes bothers me whenever they ask me how to say certain things; after hearing how I approached the expressions, they would argue and say that I'm making grammatical errors (they'd say stuff like, verbs should come before this and that, or adjectives shouldn't be used in certain places).
But the thing is, people probably won't be able to understand you if you express yourself that way. It might work in English classes in Asian countries, because of the dead on and error-free sentences, but the point in good English speaking is for people to understand you; so what's wrong with a bit of slangs using? It's more conversational, and that's the most important aspect of it, isn't it?
What I think is that the more you listen and speak in another language, the more you'll be able to improve - reading literatures of the subjects that interest you may help, in my opinion, even if they might be too difficult at first glance (heck, that's how I am in my own Literature classes, ha ha!), but dwell on them. If you come across a foreign word, don't jump to the dictionary right away; try to figure out the meaning of it by reading on. That's a good way of building your vocabulary as told by my junior high English teacher, and I'm using it even till today :)
I totally agree with your teacher though, 'cause while I grew up in Canada, my parents didn't, and it sometimes bothers me whenever they ask me how to say certain things; after hearing how I approached the expressions, they would argue and say that I'm making grammatical errors (they'd say stuff like, verbs should come before this and that, or adjectives shouldn't be used in certain places).
But the thing is, people probably won't be able to understand you if you express yourself that way. It might work in English classes in Asian countries, because of the dead on and error-free sentences, but the point in good English speaking is for people to understand you; so what's wrong with a bit of slangs using? It's more conversational, and that's the most important aspect of it, isn't it?
What I think is that the more you listen and speak in another language, the more you'll be able to improve - reading literatures of the subjects that interest you may help, in my opinion, even if they might be too difficult at first glance (heck, that's how I am in my own Literature classes, ha ha!), but dwell on them. If you come across a foreign word, don't jump to the dictionary right away; try to figure out the meaning of it by reading on. That's a good way of building your vocabulary as told by my junior high English teacher, and I'm using it even till today :)
To Summer
What a precious advice I've got from you! Thank you. Although I tend to dwell on my mistakes, I'm going to believe my potential and keep at my studying!
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I am afraid that I can't agree with him.
I do not say that grammer is all.
But I believe that it is a part of important elements.
(That is why NHK text books have a grammer lesson section.)
We just acquired Japanese grammer naturally at school or at home.
I think somebody maybe corrected my Japanese when the way I spoke (or wrote)Japanese was wrong.
I can say this at least: we should not stick to English grammer too much.
I do not want to lose my current grammer knowledge. Terrible...
Sincerely
Yuko