I had the great advantage of growing up in a home in which grammatically correct English was spoken. As I progressed through grade school and into high school, my language ability matured as a result of my home and school environments.

However, when I went to school, I needed to "learn" grammar. I did not learn to speak because I studied grammar. Rather, I learned how to do grammar exercises because I already knew how to speak.

Certainly, I learned many important things about my language through grammar study. But the primary value of English grammar came about because I already had language fluency commensurate to my age group. I did not learn to speak English as a result of English grammar lessons.

English grammar was valuable. It gave me a greater understanding of my language. But it was of importance to me only because I had already achieved basic English fluency.

ESL has reversed the process for non-English speaking students with poor results. The quickest way to teach international students to read English is to teach them to speak first. The fastest way to teach them sufficient grammar to pass college entrance exams is to build a foundation by teaching them to speak fluent English. Then they will understand English grammar. And finally, it is almost impossible to teach non-English speaking students how to write well before they have mastered basic spoken English. Whenever the process is reversed, it takes an unnecessarily long time to succeed in teaching grammar and writing skills much less spoken language fluency.

But do not misunderstand what I am saying. One cannot speak any languagefluently or otherwisewithout knowing the grammar of that language. That is true because grammar is the rules used in that language to string words together as units to convey meaning. Simply stated, placing the words in the correct order is applied grammar.

The issue is not whether or not a student learning English as a second language needs to know grammar. Language is unintelligible without it. The question is how grammar is best taught.

I am not saying that grammar is unnecessary for the new English learner. Rather, I am saying that grammar can be taught more effectivelyand in less time using audio language drills. Teaching grammar with spoken language has the great advantage of reinforcing the cognitive learning of grammar while using two additional functions found in normal speechmotor skill feedback and auditory feedback.  (See the article, ESL's Weakest Link.)

Teaching grammar as a written exercise does develop cognitive learning, but it reinforces it with visual feedback. Though visual feedback is effective, it is outside the context of spoken language. Therefore, while using written grammar exercises, the single reinforcement of visual feedback outside of the spoken language context replaces motor skill feedback and auditory feedback which are both inside the spoken language context. The tradeoff is costly and retards progress. Far more is gained when the student identifies correct grammar by the way a sentence sounds rather than by the way it looks. (Though you would not typically explain it this way, it is also important on a subconscious level that the student learns how correct grammar feels. As a function of the kinesthetic sense, a statement produces a certain sequence of sensory feedback from the mouth, tongue and air passages that feels different than a question. A speech pathologist working with children's speech problems will pay a great deal of attention to this part of speech during retraining.)

It will take considerably longer to teach a non-English speaking student how to manipulate English grammar, and then speak English correctly, than it will to teach the same student to first speak English correctly, and then introduce rules of grammar. This gain will be greatly augmented, however, if the rules of grammar are incorporated into the spoken English lessons themselves.