Why Language textbooks rarely work (and why a tree is a better model)

If you add up all the pots, pans, potatoes (and every other item) in an average American household, how many items would there be? According to the Los Angelos Times newspaper, its about 300 000.  

That’s a lot of items. Who do we thank (or blame?) for this big number? 

Perhaps Henry Ford.  

Henry Ford perfected mass production. It was a technique to build reliable and cheap cars. Other industries copied his technique and soon household items became cheap and plentiful. All thanks to this efficient technique. 

Language learning textbooks are built with an efficient technique, too. Grammar points and language functions are assembled into perfect, polished and highly marketable textbooks. 

Many are made and many are sold. Students, teachers and language departments sigh with deep relief. Everyone knows exactly what will be taught and tested.  

And the good news is, language textbooks help you speak better English - occasionally. And the bad news is, they usually don’t. 

So, what’s wrong with the traditional language textbook? Why don’t language textbooks usually work? 

One key reason is students, teachers and language departments have a hidden assumption that’s, unfortunately, incorrect. Teachers assume we can build language in the minds of our students the same way Henry Ford built a car, piece by piece. But, we can’t. A car is made with plastic and steel. Language is made from living brain tissue. 

You don’t build brain tissue, you grow it. 

And that makes things unpredictable.  

Imagine if we could learn exactly what our high school textbook presented to us? High schools and universities would be building millions of native-level speakers every year! But, we can’t. Growth is unpredictable. How do we know? Even after years of formal study, most students never get beyond a beginner or intermediate level of fluency.  

And, if we dig a little deeper, we find another reason why we struggle to learn from the perfectly built textbook. Grammar is delicately interrelated and textbooks disassemble this relation.

Think of language like a chocolate chip cookie. Would you separate the chocolate chips, the flour, the butter the salt, into little piles to figure out why it tastes so good? No, all the ingredients affect each other, change each others flavor - it’s all interrelated. Any sentence is just a collection of ingredients we call words and grammar. It’s hard to separate them and study.   

The brain is growing language like a tree - the roots, the leaves the trunk all growing together balancing and helping each other.  Textbooks add branches where there is no trunk and put leaves where there are no branches. It makes for a wonderful sequence in the textbook but the brain doesn't follow a random sequence.  

So what’s the brain’s learning sequence? What grammar does it learn when? Unfortunately, linguists don’t know. 

And, fortunately, we don’t need to know.   

We know that if we give the brain a balanced diet of comprehensible input and opportunity for output (and for adults, explicit teaching at the points they’re struggling with) language grows naturally, like a tree.   

And what does that mean for you, today? 

Don’t be discouraged if you can't use what the textbook is teaching. Most people can’t. The textbook doesn’t make you fluent, you make yourself fluent.  That’s good news if you take responsibility and bad news if you’re looking for a textbook to do it for you.  

Am I saying to never use a textbook? Of course not.

But, the textbook is only a tool that you use to achieve your goal. And, unfortunately, many textbooks will not help you in this goal. In fact, many textbooks will hurt your progress. It’s really an issue of timing - does the information the textbook present match what your brain is trying to piece together.  

So let’s quickly review.  

Our brain doesn’t build language like Henry Ford built a car.  Our brain grows language like a tree. As much as we want to learn each chapter of a textbook, we can’t. We might do well on a test but we won’t acquire a deep natural usage of the language. 

Another weakness of textbooks is because they isolate and teach grammar. This is very difficult. It’s similar to trying to put leaves on a branch that doesn’t exist yet.  

So, thank you so much, Mr. Ford, for affordable cars and household items, but let’s set aside his building technique for now and let’s help nature do what it does best - grow.