Casio,
Thank you for your answers and comments. I have one thing, at the moment, to say in response.
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Communication houses grammar. Take first language acquisition. The child finds the patterns, the rules of the grammar, without the help of a grammarian. "Grammar", or rather formal grammar, doesn't need to be taught. I was fluent in English at the age of 8, fluent for that age, and yet when my elementary school teacher started talking about nouns and verbs I was terribly lost. Didn't know "Grammar", but was communicatively fluent just the same.
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While this is true, I really believe, and know, that some grammatical structures simply aren't learned unless they are explicitly taught. With
ESL/EFL speakers, I don't think one can rely too heavily on the idea of "acquisition". In my so-called "advanced class", I do lots of lessons on conditional sentences. Some of them have even completed other advanced courses but do not know how to speak using hypothetical language. They need to see that sometimes we use "will" and sometimes "would". Sometimes we use the first conditional and sometimes the second conditional. I was just talking to Spanish speaker. She seemed to indicate that the equivalent of the second conditional in Spanish is simply more polite. In English, it's more complicated than that I'd say. Anyway, hypothetical language can be acquired, but acquisition should not be relied upon. Some simply don't ever get it. I've heard in some courses teachers only spend a couple hours on it. They show the form. Students are never really asked to answer hypothetical questions out loud. I use speaking, writing, and grammar exercises to teach this aspect of English.
If my advanced class were really advanced, I'd spend more time on vocabulary. But as it is, I know they won't get what they need unless someone shows it to them and asks them to practice it both verbally and written. Of course, there are different types of advanced students with different needs.
I have an Iranian student in another class. She spent a year in another program and didn't have a clue about what the "present perfect" was. I know she's been very pleased that someone is providing her with what she needs to progress. She needs to learn grammatical structures. She didn't understand how to use "so that, for, to, because". We've been practicing those. She's very capable. I can't imagine how she spent a year somewhere else and only got as far as she did. I don't think it had to do with her.
Some
ESL/EFL students acquire grammar by speaking. Some do not. Even the ones who do still don't acquire all of it. Explicit instruction in grammatical forms is often necessary.