MLC 105 Journal #12

[Shir Bodner]

In reflection of the following article, "A Picture of Language," I learned a lot about the teaching and learning of grammar, a component of language learning that I generally leave behind. From my experiences with Hebrew, English, Arabic, and Spanish, I've found that I am strongly apt to picking up languages and communicating successfully with native speakers. However, grammar has never been a strong point. This article has emphasized the difficulties of the method of parsing, which offers practical skills in breaking down sentences to understand tenses, parts of speech, and the number and function of conjugations. While I agree that this is tedious and not supportive of flowing speech when working on learning a new language, I think it is necessary to spend a short amount of time breaking down how sentences work in the new language. For example, one of the students I work with as a language partner, has focused the main part of the semester on learning vocabulary, and is not going back and learning about sentence structures and conjugation. Now that he is done so, he has a better understanding for the progression of words within a sentence. I think that the use of diagrams, while I have never seen it applied, would support me in grammar learning because I am definitely a visual learner. I was surprised to find at the end of the article that so many of the people the author had interviewed are in agreement.