When I was a young man, I excelled in language arts in school. I won awards for my poetry examples, consistently placed in the top three in spelling, and was generally known as an excellent communicator. So, I should be pretty good at understanding Grammar and Vocabulary, don't you think? Well, you couldn't be more wrong!
As an English language communicator, I learned mostly through chunking and patterning. I wasn't into the rules of grammar, couldn't fathom for the life of me the difference between a prefix and a suffix, pronoun and adverb, and really didn't much care. I wish I had.. cared, I mean. Because here I am at the point of becoming a facilitator in the topic. And I still feel frustrated.
For my students, I will bring to them an unbelievably strong understanding of the frustrations that Grammar and Vocabulary can deal them. I will revel in their successes, holding complete admiration for their ability to grasp a topic that I have not understood in the 50+ years of my life.
I have also been a foreign language learner - German is my second language. I used precisely the same learning methods when processing the language structure in German - I chunked what I could, and patterned and copied those knowledgeable in the language. I took one formal course in University for German language studies, and I mostly fluffed my way through that. It appears that my learning methods work well, as I was able to complete that course with a much higher-than-expected mark, and an invitation to join the German department.
My take-away for this course is that, no matter what academia prescribes as learning methods, or what we believe we understand of how our second-language learners acquire language skills, be it inductively or deductively, our students will learn in the best way that they can, and we should not stand in the way of their learning for the sake of prescribed methodologies. Learning is learning, no matter how or why it occurs.
We cannot, and must not, put our expectations of the learner ahead of the learner's needs for understanding, patience, and a huge amount of kindness.
I have experienced all of these things in my course through our instructor, for which I will be forever indebted and truly, truly grateful.
TTFN
