For adult learners, sometimes more grammar isn’t the answer.
This might be a spicy take in the language-teaching and language-learning world, but I need to say it: We don't need to be drilling so much grammar with adult learners.
I say this as a bona fide #GrammarNerd. I can talk your ear off about pronouns and conjugations. And I think that intensive grammar study is part of what helped me to become fluent in French as an adult.
AND the other side of the coin is that the biggest advances I made from B2 to C1 and then C2 came not from endlessly reviewing flashcards with the irregular verbs conjugated in the conditionnel passé... but from going BEYOND grammar and getting out and using the language.
Reading novels, nonfiction, and long news articles. Listening to podcasts and the radio. Watching French-language TV shows, news, films, and YouTubers. When I was living in France, taking every opportunity to talk, talk, and talk some more, with as many people as possible, about a wide variety of subjects: what does my friend think about the election, my neighbour's boss' questionable fashion sense, the new philosophy curriculum in the public schools, what my coworkers' toddler likes for breakfast...
And yes, I absolutely made a ton of grammatical errors when doing this. I embarrassed myself, sometimes in front of very large groups of people. (In front of classrooms full of teenagers, even!) That's part of the process. People corrected me when it was appropriate, I learned, and my confidence and my abilities grew over time.
Now, as a teacher, I understand how it's easy and safe to rely on grammar exercises to fill up time during a lesson. And we should do some grammar with just about everyone (except certain adult learners who explicitly request otherwise), but I think we do our students a disservice by not setting aside time to experiment, play, and engage in real-life use cases that are outside of a textbook.
Here's what I've observed when some adult learners come to me and their past teachers have focused way too much on grammar:
1. Fear of making a grammatical error can activate some learner's perfectionism to a detrimental degree. This is not the good kind of "I have high standards and I want to do my best" perfectionism. I'm talking about the perfectionism that makes people anxious and terrified of making normal mistakes; the kind of perfectionism that just absolutely paralyzes them and makes things much more stressful than they need to be.
2. Learners can also feel frustrated with plateauing at a high intermediate level, which seems pretty logical to me... It's very annoying to keep working but feel like you're not making any progress! However, what many people are missing is that you don't advance past this stage by doing more worksheets or multiple choice quizzes; you advance past this stage by actually deploying the language in situations that are interesting, challenging, and fun for you.
3. Finally, some folks start to get imposter syndrome because they're not 100% perfect at grammar even if they have been studying French for many years and are very advanced or fluent users!
Listen — I am going to put this in all caps — EVERYONE MAKES GRAMMAR MISTAKES.
YES, EVEN NATIVE SPEAKERS OF FRENCH.
AND YES, EVEN YOU IN YOUR NATIVE LANGUAGE. (Have you ever had to google when to use "who" vs "whom"? Or how to use a semicolon properly? Can you tell me off the top of your head what the direct object of the previous sentence is?) If you're not the Académie Française, it is perfectly normal, acceptable, and 100% fine to not always get the grammar right.
Language is one of our greatest superpowers when it comes to human connection, preserving cultural diversity, and ultimately better understanding ourselves and the world around us. When we reduce it to drilling "du" vs "de la" ... we lose out on a lot.
What do you think? I'd love to hear from you — send me a message at FrenchAvecCecile@gmail.com !