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THE IMPORTANCE OF GRAMMAR IN LANGUAGE LEARNING
Begdullaeva Uldaulet Hamidulla qizi
Nukus Innovation Institute student of the faculty of Philology
Jamalova Ummihabiba Nurullaevna
Academic superviser
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12792395
Annotation:
Grammar is sometimes considered to be unimportant in a language
learning process because of boring lessons or methods. But grammar has a vital role in this
study and it is a basic stage of the process. This paper focuses on the importance of grammar
in language learning and argues that, it has a great connection with integrated skills.
Keywords:
grammar, language, learner, successful, communication
Mark Hellyer
Jerome was a humourist rather than a linguist, but this extract perfectly illustrates how
studying grammar rules doesn’t result in being able to communicate effectively in a foreign
language. Unfortunately, more than a hundred years after he made that observation, grammar
is still the dominant component of most English courses.
The first reason relates to the fact that we remember different things in different ways.
Neuroscientist Michael T. Ullman uses the terms declarative memory and procedural memory,
but linguists over the last 60 years have made this distinction with terms such as memory and
retention, or learning and acquisition. We use declarative memory to remember facts, like the
capital of Portugal, or what we had for breakfast, or that the thing we use to eat soup with is a
spoon. So it’s declarative memory that we use for vocabulary, and it’s a fairly easy process.
Learning grammar, however, is much more complicated, rather like learning to play a musical
instrument for example, and for that we use procedural memory. So mastering the grammar
of a language is a slow subconscious process which happens over time when we are exposed
to the language; the explicit study of grammar rules has little influence on it
The second reason is that with the exception of needing to pass an exam in the target
language, grammatical perfection is not necessary for most learners to achieve their goal,
which is to use the language to communicate effectively. As Michael Lewis stated in The
Lexical Approach back in 1993: ‘Ultimately, language is not about right or wrong but about
successful or unsuccessful communication’. Poor pronunciation is actually far more likely to
lead to a breakdown in communication than poor grammar.
The third reason is that when most people learn a language they do it primarily for oral
communication. Why is this important? Well, because most grammatical descriptions of
English are based on the written language, and writing and speaking are not the same thing at
all. Now what does this mean exactly? Well, if you look at a transcript of natural spoken
English you’ll see that it is very untidy, especially when compared to a piece of written
English. Most spoken discourse is composed in real time. Speakers are working out what they
want to say and producing language at the same time. This is no simple task, and as a result
there are several features which are common in spoken English, but unusual or non-existent
in written English. I’m not going to go into these differences here because it would take too
long. The point is this: a great deal of coursebook content and lesson time is given over to
explaining the grammar rules of written English, when we know that grammar rules are very
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difficult to consciously learn and apply when speaking, and that grammatically faultless
sentences are not a realistic goal for most learners. [1]
For well over half a century now, there has been much debate among linguists and
academics about the relevance of formal grammar to the teaching of the English language,
whether for native speakers or for those learning English as a second or foreign language.
There was indeed a time, in the late twentieth century, when formal grammar virtually fell out
of the secondary school English syllabus in Britain and the USA. Teaching grammar was
deemed elitist or superfluous. On the one hand Chomsky had proposed his theory of universal
grammar, suggesting that childrens' brains were all wired up to understand grammar by
intuition; on the other hand Chomskyian linguistics was considered - not without good reason
- beyond the grasp of teenage learners and of many of their teachers too. So rejecting earlier
prescriptive or structuralist approaches to grammar, many linguists concluded that it was
best not to teach grammar at all. Teaching generative grammar, let alone transformational
grammar, to learners would be elitist, since only the best school students or EFL learners
would be able to follow.
Offering a fresh approach to traditional grammar, Andrew Rossiter's Descriptive
Grammar of English is accessible to both teachers and students. Unlike the other main
grammar reference books available today, this pedagogical grammar sets out to show how
simple grammar is, not how complex it can be.
Most of today's English grammars have been written by linguists (experts in linguistics),
and instead of explaining grammar for the needs of ordinary teachers and learners, their
attention to detail and linguistic explanations often complicates rather than clarifies.[2]
Grammar is the sound, structure, and meaningful system of language. All languages have
grammar, and every language has its own grammar. People who speak the same language are
able to communicate because they intuitively know the grammatical system of that language
that is, the rules of making meaning. Grammar is important because it is the language that
makes it possible for us to talk about the language
Yes, grammar may seem easy to some and difficult to others. And they think it's easy. Or
they give up because it is difficult. But grammar is very important to me. Nowadays, many
people think that they can focus on speaking without learning grammar. Yes, they can speak,
but they still make grammatical mistakes. Because without grammar, our sentences cannot be
formed correctly. And our words will be short and simple. Even if we want to pass IELTS, we
need grammar, which word is used where, especially in Writing and Speaking, it plays a very
important role. Although grammar takes up a lot of our time, we learn to speak well and
without fear.
References:
https://uk.linkedin.com/in/markhellyer?trk=article-ssr-frontend-pulse_publisher-
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