Biblical Hebrew Forum

["walter mattfeld" <mattfeld12 AT charter.net>]

JCP wrote:

"This is something, that as an EFL teacher, I can confirm from firsthand 
experience. My worst students
by far were the accademic grammar basher types, who could typically ace an 
exam paper but couldn't order a
cup of coffe in a cafe' if their life depended on it.
My best students were typically olympic athletes that had never studied the 
language from a grammatical
point of view. When faced with a written exam they would typically make 
enormous errors but while speaking
they would not make such errors as they spoke by instinct and had the 
ability to not only make themselves
understood but to use idioms and slangy sayings in correct contexts."

James above comment brought back to mind my Sophmore year enrollment in a 
1st year Spanish class in High School in Seguin, Texas (1958). I noted on my 
first day in class that a number of Mexican students had enrolled and I 
thought to myself, these guys already speak and think in Spanish fluently 
and this will be one easy course for them to "ace." You can imagine my 
surprise to learn later, that although they could speak Spanish better than 
the instructor, they were "flunking" the class because they could care less 
about memorizing for tests the grammar formalities of conjugations, tenses, 
prepositions, etc. So, the "Anglos" who struggled with the pronounciation of 
Spanish "aced" the grammar tests and passed the class and _still stumbled_ 
over the speaking of the language, while the real masters of the language 
flunked because they could care less about tests.

Regards, Walter