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Discussion Groups / English Usage / July 2009memory for grammer
I finally managed to catch up on some reading over the weekend and found this: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=memory-for-grammar#comments I've chosen the link with the 2 comments. If it is true that procedural memory, rather than declarative memory is a sort of fountain of grammatical knowledge, then I suggest that teaching young kids correct grammar is more important than I would have thought. >I suggest that > teaching young kids correct grammar is more important than I would > have thought. Shame you misspelled "grammar" in your title, then. contrex filted: >>I suggest that >> teaching young kids correct grammar is more important than I would >> have thought. > >Shame you misspelled "grammar" in your title, then. And "mammary" too....r  SignatureA pessimist sees the glass as half empty. An optometrist asks whether you see the glass more full like this?...or like this? > contrex filted: > [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > > And "mammary" too....r Me thinks you've confused this with the 'More Tit for Tat' item within same said issue. > -- > A pessimist sees the glass as half empty. > An optometrist asks whether you see the glass > more full like this?...or like this? > If it is true that procedural memory, rather than declarative memory > is a sort of fountain of grammatical knowledge, then I suggest that > teaching young kids correct grammar is more important than I would > have thought. Grammar is part of our cognition. Cognition is knowledge-that rather than knowledge-how. Procedural memory relates to learning to have command over skills. Grammar is not a skill. Young kids already have grammar in their heads, although it might not be activated yet. Teaching young kids correct grammar does not work out. Grammar is not teachable. Nor is it learnable. Children acquire it, or rather pick it up, without your interference in any kind. I persobally have never seen any child who doesn't know the grammar of his language. If they speak in a way that might seem to a group of people incorrect, it doesn't mean at all that they haven't learned correct grammar. It means their grammar is just not acceptable to that group. Farhad [...] > I personally have never seen any child who doesn't know the grammar of > his language. "Me have it!" as a demand, not a statement of fact. (Overheard, not contrived.) Of course, much depends on the meaning of "*his* language", in the sense of the man who spoke 267 languages, none known to anyone else. SignatureCordially, Eric Walker, Owlcroft House http://owlcroft.com/english/ > > If it is true that procedural memory, rather than declarative memory > > is a sort of fountain of grammatical knowledge, then I suggest that [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > than knowledge-how. Procedural memory relates to learning to have > command over skills. Grammar is not a skill. I guess you didn't look at the link or you might have seen; "Forming a grammatically correct sentence may seem to require advanced cognitive skills, but it turns out that our creative language capacity might rely on a less sophisticated system than is commonly thought" Or the last sentence, Victor S. Ferreira of the University of California, San Diego, in reference to procedural memory is quoted as saying "....also able to support abstract knowledge, making it “more powerful than previously thought,” >Young kids already have > grammar in their heads, although it might not be activated yet. > Teaching young kids correct grammar does not work out. Grammar is not > teachable. Nor is it learnable. Unteachable. Unlearnable? Really...I guess there might be a teacher or two out there who hasn't been informed of that rule. tsk tsk. http://www.teach-nology.com/teachers/subject_matter/literature/grammar/ > Children acquire it, or rather pick it > up, without your interference in any kind. I persobally have never > seen any child who doesn't know the grammar of his language. There would seem to be a few adults so what happened to them? Had it in childhood, but then, one day, couldn't remember where they had left it? > If they > speak in a way that might seem to a group of people incorrect, it > doesn't mean at all that they haven't learned correct grammar. It > means their grammar is just not acceptable to that group. > > Farhad Farhad: > >Young kids already have grammar in their heads, although it might not be activated yet. Teaching young kids correct grammar does not work out. Grammar is not teachable. Nor is it learnable. Aquachimp: > Unteachable. Unlearnable? Really...I guess there might be a teacher or two out there who hasn't been informed of that rule. tsk tsk. Farhad: > > Children acquire it, or rather pick it up, without your interference in any kind. I persobally have never seen any child who doesn't know the grammar of his language. Aquachimp: > There would seem to be a few adults so what happened to them? Had it in childhood, but then, one day, couldn't remember where they had left it? It seems what you mean by grammar is appropriateness of speech in social contexts. What I wrote about, and I presume that's what the link discusses, is grammar in its technical sense . By grammar I mean the knowledge to produce (and understand) syntactically correct sentences. I don't think any mentally healthy adult would produce sentences that are incorrect. Uneducated people, and similarly kids, produce sentences that might not sound appropriate to the ears of educated native speakers, but I doubt if they systematically violate any rules of their grammar. I could speak my mother tongue, Persian, correctly, although not always appropriately before I went to school at the age of 6. Nobody had taught me what a grammatically correct sentence was before that. After I went to school, I learned to speak like a gentleman. People acquire the grammar of their first language during their early years of childhood. Learning a grammar happens in second language contexts. I didn't acquire the grammar of English. I learned it. That's why I still, after so many years of learning it, can't write nor speak like a native English speaker. Conclusion: Aquachimp: > I suggest that teaching young kids correct grammar is more important than I > would have thought. If this suggestion is for young kids acquirng their native language, no intereference on our part is needed. Our interference might even lead to troubles in their process of grammar acquisition. But if it's about a second language, it's better to provide young kids before their critical age with an enviornment that they acquire the grammar of that language rather than learn it. Farhad |
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