Is grammar important for learning French?
Hi, I'm Chris. Head teacher at OuiCommunicate.
We're home to speakers of English who wish for a step up from traditional French classes by means of bilingual learning.
In this article, we'll talk about grammar in the learning of French.
Is grammar important to learn French?
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Is grammar important when learning French?
The quick answer: Yes, a minimal amount of grammar notions are necessary.
We can compare this to working in a wood shop and doing a piece of DIY construction. If we start to call everything “a tool”, we are making it harder for ourselves and for others. A saw is not a nail is not a hammer. We can’t overlook this fact and call them “things” without developing an interest in what a hammer actually does.
Luckily for us, there are only 8 tools in languages. That’s right. In any sentence you make, every word you use falls into one of 8 categories.
Among the 8 there are adjectives, nouns and verbs. Why is it important to know whether a “word” is any of each? Simply because these 8 types of words don’t behave in the same way. And they don’t behave the same between English and French either.
It’s exactly the same as knowing that a hammer serves to hit on things and that sandpaper makes wood smoother.
let’s look at an example: the word “nice” is an adjective. It’s a type of word that serves to describe things. “The car is nice” . All adjectives in English behave in the same way, minus a few exceptions. By knowing how they behave, you can predict what is going to happen until you do it instinctively.
It’s like a wood shop. At one point, you no longer need to think which tool to use because you know how it behaves for a certain job.
Coming back to our English adjectives, the rule says that they never react to the plural. It doesn’t matter if “he” is nice or if “they” are nice. However, in French it isn’t the same.
When the subject is plural (they). the adjective “nice” will take on the letter “S”. The French adjective shows how many people or things are involved. Imagine the difficulty if you call it a “word”! You wouldn’t know which problem you are trying to solve.
By knowing that “nice” is an adjective (and not just a “word”) you will also know that it will behave in a certain way.
In our teaching of French, we keep grammar to a minimum. Past a certain point, it becomes a waste or resources instead of a tool for progress. Especially in high schools, some teachers speak of “noun phrases” or “prepositional verbs”. We don’t believe that this is necessary.
Of the 8 types of words, we recommend knowing verbs, adjectives, adverbs, nouns, and pronouns. The last 3 are prepositions, conjunctions and determiners. It is not crucial to be able to recognize and name them.
Our advice: learn to recognize the types of words you have in front of you. It can be hard coming from the English language but it is definitely worth the investment. I’d even go as far as to say it is necessary. Below, I will demonstrate why I think that.
Let's look at a real case situation
The sentence “I am giving you my number” is translated “Je te donne mon numero”.
What does “te” mean? “Te” is a pronoun that means “to you” in this case. The role of pronouns is to replace other words. Once we know what class of word “te” belongs to, we can ask ourselves how many others there are. Do they all follow the same rule in French?
The fact is that pronouns such as “te” always go in front of the verb, and not after. And if we don’t know what a verb is, we are quite navigating in the dark at this stage!
In French, we say “I lift the suitcase” but we don’t say “I lift it.” once we use a pronoun. We say “I it lift”. Why? because pronouns go in front of the verb, just as in the first example we saw.
We quickly see that “I give you” and “I lift it” show a pattern in French. Each time we used a pronoun it went in the same place just in front of the verb.
Not knowing this rule will take considerable amounts of time before understanding what is happening. This is why some notions of grammar are very helpful.
Why we don't know grammar in English
The reason speakers of English don’t know grammar can be explained by 3 main reasons.
The first is the fact that grammar rather serves for the upper levels of English. When we want to speak “proper”!
The second is the nature of English. Not all languages have the same priorities. For example, German has much more use of Declensions and therefore requires a higher understanding of pronouns and prepositions. (You might remember that we mentioned that prepositions were not so important in French)
English is a language that speakers can easily repeat. We see this worldwide to varying degrees of success. People have a tendency to repeat and include their own accent. They can also get by with simplified conjugation and sentences. Barely any adjectives are necessary in English and sentences can be short.
French has different priorities. It is a language that is conjugation-based. The pronunciation is also more unified. Adjectives have a more complex functioning that in English.
The third reason is cultural. The English language has taken on the role of worldwide language but most importantly English belongs to no authority. Any speaker has complete freedom to use English as they want.
Native speakers of English have little use to speak eloquently with “brainy words” or long sentences. There is no societal pressure in the UK, Australia, New Zealand or America to speak beautifully.
We have the possibility to share big ideas with simple words. We can limit our vocabulary to “great ” and “bad” and still be understood. The codes of communication in French are not the same and there is more of a social tradition to speak well.
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To conclude on French grammar
From my personal observations, not knowing the bare minimum in grammar causes problems to English speakers when learning French.
It is especially noticeable in verbs. When students want to say “I like to play sports” they translate it to “J’aime de jouer au sport”. The quick explanation would be to show that “to play” is the action of playing. It is technically called an “infinitive”.
What do you like? “The action of playing”. We simply translate this by “jouer” in French. There is no need to say “de jouer” as we do in English. This typical problem always comes from an insufficient knowledge of grammar.
For those who don’t understand the definition of a verb, it can be quite tricky to explain that “to play” should be seen as one word. It is the “action of playing”. Two words in English can translate to one word in French.
I was never a champion at sentence analysis in my Linguistics classes at university, which I found to be quite pointless.
It may be more wise to be able to draw the line between superfluous and useful when speaking of grammar. It should be a tool foremost and provide reliable explanations and even shortcuts. Grammar for its own sake quickly falls into the role of pointing out mistakes. This does not encourage learning!
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