einzelne wrote:Cavesa wrote:However, a huge and scary obstacle at the intermediate level is still the grammar, which is still not that solid for many learners. It's not just about vocabulary, not at all.
Is it really? I can only speak for myself but, while moving from textbook materials to unadapted texts, grammar has never been an issue for me (my experience is limited though — I can speak only for French, German, and Italian). For instance, I 'discovered' and started to pay attention to subjoncif in French only after a year of reading. Usually, context helps: Ich bin in der Stadt vs Ich gehe in die Stadt — so long you the only thing you care is reading, understanding such sentences is not a problem, provided you know the meaning of the words 'Ich' 'gehen' and 'Stadt'. On the contrary, you can know that the subject is the plural, the verb is past perfect and the object is in Akkusativ but if you don't know the meaning of the subject, the verb, the object, this grammar knowledge is basically useless.
Usually, I start to pay attention to grammar once I barely have any new words on the page. It's because, when words recognition becomes automatic, you finally have available cognitive sources for polishing your grammar.
In Latin, yes. It was a problem, because there was clearly a need for much more practice on texts. The grammar had been covered, but not practiced enough, so some Living Latin material would be great for that.
You are going into the old useless assumption, that learning grammar=learning about grammar, which is simply not true, please don't use this straw man. The grammar needs to be learnt with its application, that's what I am talking about. It looks as if you were a bit losing the direction of the discussion here. I am not advocating for even more grammar analysis, the Latin coursebooks I know do a good job at that. But for more practice of using and understanding the grammar in context (which we seem to agree on, as something very useful), and that's why I think graded readers and Living Latin would be great for learners. As a stepping stone, that doesn't overwhelm with vocab or too complicated style.
I don't believe in the "you finally have cognitive sources" attitude. I usually pay attention to both vocab and grammar, and find it shortsighted to learn grammar secondarily. It leads to fossilized mistakes and to learning mistakes due to wrong deductions. It is less of a problem in some comprehension situations, but I find it a bad strategy, if you are after high reading comprehension of classical texts.