Right
from the beginning in French 1 I had to memorize the gender of nouns for every
test and quiz. Later on, my teachers tried to teach us how you can often tell
what gender based off of things like suffixes, but I never memorized any of the
rules they told us. However I do really well knowing what words are what gender
when I speak and write getting it right about 95% of the time. I have no clue
how I compare with my peers; perhaps everybody just figures it out without
realizing it or thinking about it. I think my brain has probably just figured
out the rules on its own, maybe partly through the forced memorization in the
beginning of my French instruction.
I
wonder how exactly we learn and memorize the gender of nouns; there are a ton
of them. How should we as teachers teach it? When I first had to learn gender
it was hard for me to memorize, just like verb conjugations, now I have no
problem with either of them and have not had a problem for a very long time.
Did that mandatory memorization in the beginning set me up to establish a
system of rules in my head that I do not think about, or was it a waste of time
and I would have figured it all out eventually without that tough memorization?
Knowing
gender is really important in French and as I can see in German and Spanish as
well. It would be interesting to see if there are any scholarly articles on it,
any research. But I definitely do not have time to research it now! J
I think that a basic overview of the common "endings" that typically indicate a feminine noun in french would very helpful for—yes of course, there are still some exceptions, but all those —ette, —ion, —é —ee endings are a good place to start. My teachers never personally taught me, but I came to recognize them eventually on my own, as you said, in the same way that I learned the verb conjugations.
ReplyDeleteIf we are talking in class about an arbitrary grammar topic that has no set rules, I often introduce it, give students as many tips as I can, then tell them to do their best and that they'll pick it up as they advance in the language. I sometimes worry that this is an obnoxious thing to tell a beginning language learner, because there's such a long way to go in the language. But I think it's the truth - I really did gain instincts in my L2 that I never explicitly learned. As a beginning student I think it must be hard to hear though.
ReplyDeleteI often find myself telling students that everything will become more clear and easily understandable once they have more time/practice with the language. I think that as a beginner student it can often be overwhelming to memorize all of the vocabulary and grammatical concepts that are actually necessary to use the language. A lot of my students get frustrated because they want everything to come together at once and to have a very strong command of the Spanish language as a whole, without understanding that language learning is a long, and often tedious process. Sometimes students ask me for specific rules related to difficult grammar points, such as how to know if a present tense verb will be regular or irregular, to which I usually respond that they simply need more experience working with the language in order to start recognizing and remembering key patterns.
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