Quote:
Originally Posted by mbovenka
Neither can most native speakers, in my experience  .
They can tell you something is right or wrong, but why it is? I am Dutch, and was taught grammar in both primary and secondary school, but I remember very little of it. A wrong sentences grates, but I couldn't for the life of me tell you what grammar rule it violates. It's just 'wrong'.
Same with English. I am C2 level certified (Cambridge Proficiency) and I can tell you whether a sentence is correct English or not. But don't ask me to explain why; I probably won't be able to tell you. It just 'feels' right or wrong. |
My point exactly ! I am French, and I guess I can say I am fluent in English and German (British Dad, German husband and 20 years in Germany), level C1 in Spanish (certified by the Instituto Cervantes). My best grammar level is in German. I do not make grammatical mistake at all in French nor in German, but with German, I can explain to native speaker WHY they've just made one, because I know the rules perfectly well. It is getting there now with Spanish too, I can correct my kids, the plumber and so on. And I can explain the rule. In French I obviously see the mistakes, but most of the time I have to refer to either my Bescherelle or my Bled to explain to my kids why a certain declination of the verb, or a certain tense cannot be used the way they do. For French, Bescherelle and Bled (google those, they are our grammatical bibles) belong to every good house library.
My point is : some (many?) native speakers have either a rotten level of grammtical knowledge, or cannot explain how their language is structured. Neither can kids, which explain why they may learn to speak and read a new language "on the go", but writing it is a whole different story. I am observing my two kids, 8 and 11, already fully bilingual in French and German, learning Spanish and English. Their conversational level just baffles me, but I still do need to help a lot with the written homeworks. But hey, in the end they will be at least bilingual plus two more fluent languages, so I am not complaining.