to do. Eveiy month we got an "F". We didn't even have a dictionary. A
base is necessary.
As it can be seen, these "bases" are not mutually exclusive. The same student
may have stated her inclination for more than one possibility, and in all the cases in
which this happened, the combination of bases seems to be coherent. For instance, the
same student agreed that a teacher and a textbook are the base for good learning, which
means that the former needs to use the latter and not that one takes over the other. Other
common combinations were teacher∕Spanish, grammar∕Spanish, textbook∕grammar, etc.
b) Language learning and the dichotomy between grammar and practice
Two important factors that students take into account, when defining the process
of learning a language, is grammar and practice. The learning of a language is seen as a
process formed by two elements: grammar and practice. In this view it is implied that
both are essential:
Ga: For me, grammar is very important. My life goes around it....However, in
spite of the success of the teaching system, if you don't apply it, you don't
get it. Practice is important, it is part of the learning process.
However, Ga does not place grammar and practice at the same level, for her
priority now is only grammar:
Ga: Now, I only work on grammar. Grammar is my only interest.
Her reason is embedded in her own view of the function of grammar, which shows her
focus on grammaticalisation in opposition to Iexicalisation (Batstone; 1994, 57).
Ga: Knowing the structure of the sentence you can accumulate vocabulary.
If you know where to put the adjective. Then you don’t have
to memorise the whole sentence. Instead, knowing the structure you can
play around with a lot of adjectives, or adverbs, for instance.
Ge, who agrees with Ga about the importance of grammar, mentions the
predisposition of students for not learning it and the way to solve the problem with an
inductive approach:
Ge: Even grammar in Spanish is taught “by law”. Then you hear
about grammar and your first reaction is to reject it. They have to make
it more digestible. It is possible. If you tell a child that you are going
to give him a medicine, he is going to reject it, it doesn’t matter how
sweet the medicine is. It is going to be bitter for him. He doesn’t like
it just because he knows that it is a medicine. Then, if in the classroom
the teacher says ‘Let’s pay attention to these actions, underline them, let’s
think about them, reflect on them, pay attention to the words. You