If you take two novices and dump one into arbitrarily extensive grammar lessons for 2 years, and the other into spending a couple hours per day listening (i.e. actively focusing attention on trying to understand what is being said) to the language for 2 years, at the end the first person won’t speak the language and the second person will.
The first person is going to learn something, but it’s not an efficient use of their time if the goal is language fluency.
If you want to learn to read, then by far the most effective use of time is to practice reading, with whatever minimal bootstrapping is necessary up front to start reading very basic material.
This is not just speculation. There has been a ton of scholarly research on this topic.
The first person is going to learn something, but it’s not an efficient use of their time if the goal is language fluency.
If you want to learn to read, then by far the most effective use of time is to practice reading, with whatever minimal bootstrapping is necessary up front to start reading very basic material.
This is not just speculation. There has been a ton of scholarly research on this topic.