The way english is taught to english people is really a mystery to any french. I know more about english grammar than pretty much any englishman i’ve crossed, simply because french schools teach english the same way they teach french : with a mix of vocabulary and grammar. but it looks like english schools don’t teach grammar at all.
This has been my experience as well as an American. We did have grammar in school, but there was not a large emphasis placed on anything past, "this is an adverb/adjective/noun/verb" as a part of the lesson plan.
Ultimately, grammar is most important for speaking and writing. Do you really need to know "this is a secondary subject clause" to speak and write with eloquence? I don't think so. This is anecdotal, but I learned to be a better writer by reading more, not by studying grammatical theory.
Additionally, this could also be colored by my experience growing up in America. We have language classes in school, but literally no one took them seriously. After 3 years of Spanish, I'm not sure if I was even past A1.
As an adult and moving to a foreign country, I'm learning a second language (Dutch) with much more attention to detail but I'm having the most issues with grammar. Not that I don't understand the concepts, but more-so that I do not know any grammatical vocabulary. Verb/noun/pronoun/adjective/adverb/preposition... yeah those are all of the words I know off the top of my head. So when the teacher said, "this is the infinitive form of the verb", I was completely lost. I'm trying to study the grammatical concepts, but because they aren't everyday words, I tend to forget them quickly.
Exactly this. They tried to teach us French grammar without teaching us English grammar!
When I have discussed this with multilingual continental Europeans they have found their understanding of grammar to be a great advantage when learning a new language. To me it is a complete mystery!
It is pointless trying to teach English people foreign languages this way, unless they are going to start by teaching them their native language this way first!
