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Stop studying English grammar in order to learn the language.
When you’re trying to learn or improve your English, you might feel tempted to grab any grammar book from Amazon.com and work your way through them. You may have been studying English in school for exams and feel that your English is not improving. Does studying grammar really improve your English? Should you study grammar in the first place when you’re trying to learn English?
My answer is: no.
The first language
To properly understand why my answer is no, a brief exploration of first language acquisition (FLA) is required before linking this to second language acquisition (SLA).
Somewhat unrelated to SLA but not less interesting is the notion that children can already hear languages before they are born. There is evidence that a foetus can hear sounds and respond to sounds after seven months (Saxton, 2010) and can distinguish between speakers and different tones. This is why the baby is drawn to the mother’s voice after birth and recognises her voice before its father’s voice — sorry, dads.
A person’s language learning journey starts before birth, and language development continues exponentially after birth. A child is constantly exposed to the language, and the malleability of a child’s brain makes it extremely easy to…
