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- The communicative method is based on spoken language, but what about grammar?
I'm always taken aback by the alternative question: "Conversational or grammar?", which juxtaposes these concepts against each other. They are two halves of the same whole! Try to imagine one without the other for a moment.
Spoken language without grammar.
A regular phrase like, "Have you read the book? Then I'll drop by," without knowledge of grammar would turn into, "You book read? I to you run."
Therefore, when we say that without grammar, you can't even connect two words, we're not exaggerating, but rather... understating its importance. Example: after a greeting through the intercom, a student says just one word, "открываю/I am opening" and a few seconds later, another: "открыла?/have I opened?". Is it possible to say these two phrases (one word in each) without knowing grammar?
Grammar without spoken language
- would resemble a profound statement like, "Present Continuous is the present continuous tense, which is formed using the auxiliary verb 'to be', and so on." Probably, after reading something like this, Griboedov would say it's like "a mix of French (in our case, English) with Nizhny Novgorod dialect" – a clumsy attempt to explain the laws of one language using another. Let's immediately formulate the rule:
About what "speaking in no way" means and the first encounter with verb tense forms.
Grammar is not only represented by verbs with their forms, but let's talk about them as one of the important grammatical phenomena. Which verb form should we study first?
- Present Simple?
But why? Is it encountered more frequently? Not at all! For what this particular choice leads to, see the section "Grammar at a glance."
- Then, maybe, Present Continuous?
Let's refer to our childhood memories or motherhood experience (by the way, the best adviser in all questions of language learning). Here's a mom, returning from a walk, leaning over the infant in the stroller: "That's why you couldn't sleep for me. And mom, silly, didn't understand that the baby wet himself! You've been lying wet for a whole hour! Don't cry, my little one, look, I bought you these booties, as soon as we get home we'll try them on!" In this simple, real-life example, it's clear how the mother showers the baby with a stream of: Past Simple, Past Perfect, Present Perfect Continuous, Present Perfect, Going to for future, etc. What a horror! Poor baby, he's not even a year old! This is how the first encounter with verb tense forms happens.
In other words, the complexity of the tenses we use in natural speech doesn't correspond with the order they are typically taught in many language courses. It underscores the idea that in real life, languages are not compartmentalized into neat grammar categories; instead, they are fluid and overlapping.
We didn't learn dialectics from Hegel!
With the clanging of battles, it pierced the verse,
When under our bullets the bourgeoisie ran!
(V. Mayakovsky)
Let the grammar of the English language be imprinted in our child's consciousness with the growl of the wolf from the fairy tale: “Where are you going, Red Riding Hood?”, (Present Continuous), with the squeal of the little bear: “Someone has been eating my porridge!” (Present Perfect Continuous) and the exultation of John Cake: “I have run away from an old woman and an old man!”. By the time the child grows up, matures enough to generalize what they've heard, when their vocabulary allows them to formulate rules in English, they will have something to talk about. In any English publication, grammar is introduced through "presentation", that is, presenting a situation that demonstrates a particular grammatical phenomenon, and then the student is asked to formulate the rule themselves: “complete the rule”. For children, this process is better made more gradual.
1st stage.
The child hears and sees these grammatical phenomena along with others in natural speech or in text.
2nd stage.
In the second stage, in essence, they "cover" a certain section of grammar. They are presented with various examples of applying this rule, they even do exercises themselves, practicing the skills of using it. In general, everything is like with adults, with the only difference being that the names of these grammatical phenomena, whether it's Present Continuous, Comparative, Superlative, can only be seen perhaps in a teacher's manual, which is not voiced aloud. - This is what it means to speak “in no way” about grammar.
3rd stage.
At a more mature stage, they will once again consciously focus their attention on this rule, generalize it, compare, supplement, and... name it with its adult name. And God forbid us to start explaining any grammatical phenomenon with the words "You are about to study the most complex tense in the English language, Present Perfect”!
When an English toddler smears tears on his cheeks and screams “Who broke my toy?!” or runs towards his mother asking “Did you bring something yummy?”, it never crosses his mind that he's using the Present Perfect. Perhaps his tears would dry up from fear, and his appetite would disappear realizing he used one of the most complex English tenses. Try telling a young boy about the complexity of communicating with the opposite sex. Won't he spend the rest of his life visiting psychologists? Let the children's encounter with grammar be just as natural, light, beautiful, slightly veiled at the beginning with the mystery, romance, and then their understanding of it will be full, profound. Only then will grammar be familiar, natural, helping to quickly construct phrases, and not frightening with its cumbersome rules.
