I Never Get The Grammar Rules… But I Use Them!

How Knowledge Is Different From Performance, And How This Can Help Language Learning

How much do you know about the grammar rules of English?  You may blab in English with perfect fluency, but do you know a past participle from a relative pronoun?  Of course, we all study grammar in school, but for most of us all those nouns, verbs and past participles go by the wayside in daily life.  Even though we don't know those rules, we use them every day.  Not only do we use them, we use them perfectly. 

The key to understanding how this works is that there is a difference between knowing a language and using it.  Getting a grasp on this concept will help you in your language learning adventures.

Knowledge Vs. Performance

There are two sides to using a language - knowledge and performance.  Knowledge means knowing the language (grammar rules, words and expressions); performance means your ability to spit those words out and get it right when you need them.  Here are two examples of typical language learners to help explain.

One is a Japanese doctor.  He has studied English for 20 years and he knows the grammar rules of English better than you do!  What's the difference between "which" and "that" when using a relative clause?  He could rattle that rule off to you while you're still reaching for your dictionary - but only in Japanese. 

This is because our Japanese doctor has spent all these years studying instead of speaking English.  You would be amazed at the number of second language learners whose knowledge far exceeds their performance.

Our other example is a refugee from Vietnam who works a menial job.  Although he has never cracked open an English textbook in his life, he can carry on a perfectly coherent conversation with another English speaker about any topic under the sun.  Not only that, but he uses English idioms and colloquial expressions like a native.  He'll be lost if you throw a difficult word his way, and he can't even read the headlines of the newspaper, but he can talk circles around our Japanese doctor.

The Vietnamese refugee was plopped down in this strange land and he had to master the language or else.  He has never had the time to study, and his knowledge of the language's structure and vocabulary is weak.  He has learned everything he knows through his work and daily life, by just surviving.

The point of these stories is to show that knowledge and performance are two distinctly different parts of language learning. 

What It Means For You

When you study a foreign language, you will often feel that one leads the other.  Sometimes you'll have a conversation with someone in your second language and go home determined to hit the books because they used a bunch of words you didn't understand.  Other times you'll spend hours a day studying and making progress, only to watch all that knowledge slip out of your hands when you try to order a coffee at a restaurant.

It's important to keep these two factors in balance.  One will always lag behind the other, but it's important to keep working on both.

Strengthening Knowledge

The keyword is... study.  Use language materials appropriate to your study.  Write down and review new words that you learn.  Chart your progress and fill in the gaps where you feel like your knowledge is lacking.

Strengthening Performance

The keyword is... practice.  Get out there and talk to people.  Don't get hung up too much on whether you make mistakes or not.  Sometimes you just need speaking experience.

Of course, this is oversimplified.  Learning a language is always complicated.  But it's important to remember that there are these two skills involved, which you have to always practice.  If you know where your weaknesses are, you will be able to improve.

Peter Freeman
Polyglotus.com