The terms language acquisition and language learning are often used as if they mean the same thing. In practice, they describe two quite different ways language develops – and that difference becomes very visible in adult classrooms.
Most teachers recognise the pattern. A student can explain a grammar rule clearly, complete controlled exercises with few errors, and even correct others. Yet when asked a simple, unscripted question, they hesitate. They know the structure, but they can’t use it comfortably and quickly.
That gap is rarely about effort or ability. More often, it reflects what the learner has been trained to do. Many adult learners have been trained to think about English, rather than to use English.
Understanding the distinction between acquisition and learning helps us close that gap without abandoning grammar, and without turning every lesson into a lecture.
Acquisition: Building automatic use
Language acquisition refers to the gradual development of the ability to use language naturally and automatically. It is how children develop their first language – through repeated exposure, interaction, and the need to communicate.
In a second language classroom, acquisition depends on similar conditions:
- Exposure to language that learners can mostly understand
- Attention focused on meaning rather than terminology
- Genuine reasons to express ideas
- Repeated encounters with the same forms in different contexts
This perspective is strongly associated with Stephen Krashen and his emphasis on comprehensible input. While classroom reality is more complex than any single theory, the practical takeaway is clear: learners become fluent through regular exposure and real use.
Acquisition builds automaticity. Over time, learners begin to produce language without consciously assembling it piece by piece.
Learning: Understanding the system
Language learning, by contrast, involves conscious knowledge of how the language works. It includes understanding rules, recognising patterns, and manipulating structures in controlled exercises.
For adult learners, this kind of clarity can be reassuring. It provides structure and reduces uncertainty. In exam contexts especially, explicit instruction can lead to quick, measurable gains.
But conscious knowledge does not automatically become spontaneous ability.
A learner may know how the present perfect is formed, yet still pause mid-sentence to construct it. Under real communicative pressure, they often fall back on simpler or more familiar structures.
This difference between knowing and using is the key difference between learning and acquisition.
The missing link: Noticing
One reason communicative use matters so much is that it creates opportunities for learners to notice language.
Research into how languages are learned suggests that learners are unlikely to fully absorb new structures unless they notice them, either in the input they hear and read, or when they attempt to produce something and realise there is a gap.
You see this constantly in class:
- A learner hears past tense forms many times without fully registering them.
- Then they try to tell a story and get stuck.
- Or they say “Yesterday I go…” and something feels wrong.
- Or a partner naturally reformulates their sentence and they suddenly register the difference.
That moment of noticing is powerful. It connects meaning with form.
This is why “just more speaking” is not enough on its own. Communication helps when it creates the right conditions: learners attempt meaning, encounter limits, and become aware of what needs adjusting.
Feedback – light, selective, and well-timed – supports this process. Not constant correction, but enough to sharpen awareness.
Why adult courses often lean too heavily on rules
Many adult courses are organised around grammar progression. Lessons are built around tenses and forms, followed by controlled practice. Communication is sometimes added at the end, if there’s time.
The logic is understandable: master each part of the system and fluency will follow.
But language rarely assembles itself so neatly. Learners can collect correct forms without being able to use them naturally in conversation.
Two common problems appear:
1. Limited communicative repetition
A structure is “covered” once and then rarely revisited in meaningful contexts.
2. Practice that stays too safe
Recognition tasks (gap fills, matching) dominate. Learners get good at choosing answers but not at retrieving forms quickly while thinking about meaning.
Over time, this leads to the familiar frustration: students who feel they have studied for years but still lack confidence speaking.
Bringing grammar and communication together
The most effective classrooms rarely choose between acquisition and learning. They combine both.
An approach often described as “focus on form,” associated with Michael Long and developed further by Rod Ellis, describes this balance well. Communication remains central, but attention is briefly drawn to language when it becomes relevant.
In practice, this might look like:
- Students complete a meaningful task.
- A language issue emerges that blocks clarity.
- The teacher briefly highlights or reformulates the form.
- Students immediately reuse the improved language.
Grammar is not ignored; it simply supports communication.
This sequencing tends to feel natural to adult learners. They get clarity, but connected to something they were trying to say.
Helping students use what they know
Even when learners understand a structure and have noticed it, they still need to build speed and ease in using it.
Fluent communication requires quick retrieval. In real conversation, there is no time to mentally consult a rule chart.
This is where practice becomes most useful – not mechanical drilling, but practice that gradually reduces support and asks students to do more with the language.
A helpful progression might look like this:
- Start with supported examples or sentence frames.
- Move to guided speaking with prompts.
- Reduce scaffolding so learners must generate more independently.
- Add light time pressure or information gaps.
- Recycle the structure later in a new context.
This is how understanding turns into confident use.
Practical classroom examples
1. The two-pass task
Pass 1: Students complete a discussion task (e.g., “best and worst travel experiences”) with minimal interruption.
Micro-focus: You put several anonymised sentences heard during the task on the board – some accurate, some typical errors. Students work in pairs to improve them.
Pass 2: Students repeat the task with a new partner, consciously reusing improved patterns.
This approach keeps communication central, creates noticing, and forces immediate reuse.
2. Same meaning, different form
Provide prompts where students express the same idea in two ways:
- “I met him in 2019.” → “I’ve known him since 2019.”
- “We went to Italy last year.” → “We’ve been to Italy once.”
Students then personalise and share with a partner.
This helps learners become more flexible and see grammar as interconnected meaning, not isolated units.
3. Half-Scripted conversations
Instead of open role play, give partial structure:
- “Have you ever ____?”
- “Yes, I have. I ____ when ____.”
- “Really? What was it like?”
Students fill in content freely, ensuring repetition of the pattern without it feeling artificial.
When students know the rule but don’t use it
If learners can explain a structure but don’t use it, ask:
- Have they heard it often enough in meaningful input?
- Have they needed it to complete a task, or was it optional?
- Have they reused it across lessons?
- Did they notice it clearly when it appeared?
- Have they practised retrieving it under light pressure?
- Is fear of mistakes blocking output?
Often, the problem is not “we need to teach it again,” but “we need to create better opportunities for use.”
Final thoughts: Converting knowledge into ability
A useful way to frame the whole issue is this:
- Learning gives students a map.
- Acquisition is building the ability to travel without checking the map every few seconds.
Explicit teaching can accelerate understanding. But communication, noticing, and repeated use are what turn knowledge into confident, natural use.
Students don’t study English to describe its structure. They study it to communicate. When lessons consistently move from understanding to use – and then back again for refinement – learning and acquisition begin to support each other rather than compete.
And that is usually where real progress becomes visible.
Sources and further reading
If you’d like to explore how you can balance grammar and communication more practically in everyday lessons, have a look at our aticle on whether grammar is really important.
The following works have shaped much of the modern discussion around language acquisition, grammar teaching and classroom interaction. They represent a range of perspectives within second language development, from input-based theories to interaction and skill-building approaches.
- DeKeyser, R. (Ed.). (2007). Practice in a Second Language: Perspectives from Applied Linguistics and Cognitive Psychology. Cambridge University Press.
- Ellis, R. (2006). Current issues in the teaching of grammar: An SLA perspective. TESOL Quarterly, 40(1), 83–107.
- Krashen, S. (1982). Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. Pergamon Press.
- Long, M. H. (1996). The role of the linguistic environment in second language acquisition. In W. C. Ritchie & T. K. Bhatia (Eds.), Handbook of Second Language Acquisition. Academic Press.
- Schmidt, R. (1990). The role of consciousness in second language learning. Applied Linguistics, 11(2), 129–158.
- Swain, M. (1995). Three functions of output in second language learning. In G. Cook & B. Seidlhofer (Eds.), Principle and Practice in Applied Linguistics. Oxford University Press.
29 comments
Akchich
The old dichotomy of acquisition vs learning needs to be scientifically proved as nobody knows where the bounds between acquisition and learning are. Assuming acquisition is the right model to follow in FL teaching would create an immense void in language accuracy and vice versa in regard to Learning which would create specialists in language rules with no communicative competence.
As experience has shown me the two should go hand in hand with a slight emphasis on acquisition. Nevertheless, the teacher should be left to decide to take the right decision as to what best suits his/her students.
Faith
I agree wholeheartedly with this article. I have taught English to German adults for many years and their problem is that they think they should be learning the way rightly described here as ineffective – and they protest if a different tack is taken, because they think there’s only one way to learn and that is devoid of any imagination or contribution by them. They think they can learn rules and apply them to make comprehensible language, but when asked what they would like to say they are unable to think of anything outside the box. When I ask them to say something in German first, they often can’t do that either. The problem is that they think learning a foreign language will automatically increase their speech powers! “Let’s have a conversation”, they might suggest if I haven’t done so (because I know it’s futile). I then usually say “Good. What shall we talk about?” Ah well, maybe not today…. I’ve tried so many tactics. One of my favourites is talking for one minute on a favourite book, film, animal, food, place, whatever – chosen by them, of course. It’s always so difficult to get any real communication going. These same people have often learnt English in various adult courses for years and years. They come along with a word scribbled down somewhere and say they don’t understand it. Can I tell them what it means? What is the context? Oh, I just wanted the word. I try to explain that a dictionary can translate words, but meanings are interwoven with context.
But I should mention that school education – at least in Germany – is done on the “take it through” principle. Directly translated from “durchnehmen”, in language that means doing some point of grammar or syntax, doing a test on it, then moving on and probably forgetting it. The teaching is not joined-up. Neither are the learners taught to join things up themselves. The result is that most of the school material is forgotten. So they want to learn it again as they did at school. Only they didn’t learn it. And adult education books are for the most part on the same system. Very few beginners’ books have any kind of joined-up text. Just sentences using whatever grammar is available. Just like the CDs. I could go on…
Dr Shahid
agree with you faith
Cathy
I think language should be learned through the most natural method we have -through communication. After all isn’t that why we learn a language in the first place. The problem in our day and age is that there are so many exams that test grammar proficiency instead of the ability to communicate that teaching tends to veer in that direction.
Ben
I agree with this article. Although learning of the basic structure of a language is important, learning grammar by rote accomplishes little. Children learn to speak purely through natural communication. Once they have acquired general fluency in their own language, their mastery of it is fine-tuned when they attend school and learn the rules. Often adults want to learn grammar and this helps them to write properly. However, even though these same people can write with a certain amount of competency and even cite grammar rules accurately, they often have very big problems applying this knowledge in conversation. We should not minimize the importance of acquisition vs learning. They are both necessary, but acquisition should be the larger part of the mix. It works!
Bruce
An excellent article! Yes, acquisition is the way and to acquire language the learning process needs to be broadened – not by rote! Cultural and related dimensions plus practical application are relevant to the process.
Try the QUESTIA on-line library where targeted reading will give support to the acquisition emphasis.
Linda
It is true that instruction alone is rarely, if ever, enough to allow adults to use a language for communication. But – let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater. I have known adults who have failed to either acquire or learn the language of the country they have lived in for ten or more years through exposure alone. They need instruction as well. As a language teacher I see my job as providing whatever it needs to help my students acquire/learn the language for their purposes – be they communicative, academic, or whatever else. My teaching repertoire has to include sufficient variety and flexibility to do that.
Trudy
This is an interesting debate, but I do feel that what hasn’t been mentioned is the fact that young children’s brains appear to learn differently and be more flexible than an adult’s brain… and I think that this means that an entirely communicative approach may not be completely successful in teaching adults. My husband, for example, learned German in this way, but when it comes to reading or writing it, or even translating words or phrases (in context) he has difficulty. It’s fine if it’s just for speaking purposes, but even native speakers of English need to learn some formal language structures later after they have learned to speak fluently, e.g. for university studies, etc.
A combination does seem ideal, with an emphasis on the communicative side. By the way, my experience teaching German business people English was entirely different… I had some amazingly good conversations with them, often focusing on current affairs and some fairly deep philosophical discussions… perhaps I was just fortunate with my students.
Allan Apel
I’m new to the TEFL course, armed with a German/French degree from the 80’s. Thanks to a fabulous German teacher in South East London, we definitely LEARNED and enjoyed learning German which I believe was vital in giving me the grammatical backbone to the Dutch I speak today living in the Netherlands for which I received only 20 formal lessons; the rest was acquisition. Having been exposed to both methods of learning a Germanic language I will always lean towards German as being the language which has most clarity and structure since that is how I learned it and feel to this day plays a vital role for the beginner.
Faith
I agree with the arguments here. I particularly want to comment on what Trudy wrote. Of course, there are exceptions. I’ve had many a good conversation with German students, but they remain the exception to the rule. Business students are more likely to cope if they’ve had experience with clients etc. and get around a lot – and because they are desperate to be good at English. If they are not, it often puts their jobs at risk. Wherever possible I use no German at all (unless it’s a horrendous grammar problem) during lessons with people who understand enough to get started, even if their English is not yet really fluent. We cope with grammar as it crops up and try to personalize what they are saying through a form of repetition of the things they want to say. That also improves pronunciation and is good fun if done in a humorous way. But there are other elements in language learning/acquisition which should not be underestimated. For instance, someone with a “musical ear” can pick up – and imitate – language much faster than other people. Small children learn by imitation, which is why they sometimes say the right things in the wrong places and vice versa! Their timing is unbeatable. The brain has completed its main development by the time a child is 3 and so has the assimilation of grammar and structures in its own native language(s). The Helen Doron method of starting virtually at birth is on the right track there. When adults are prepared to dive in at the deep end, they learn better and faster. Finally, I rather think that in the end the two terms used are in themselves problematical. Could one not replace them with active vs. passive?
Ryan
My favourite way to learn a language is to listen. Particularly I treasure moments sat in bars and cafes LISTENING to people talk, getting comfortable with the rhythms and picking out the odd words and phrases that I *do* know until I can make general sense of what is being said.
For me grammar comes later…
Pati
From personal experience I know that the way to learn a language is to live the language. I studied Spanish throughout high school and into college but it was not until I had lived in Mexico that I was able to actually speak the language. I do believe that learning the grammar and vocabulary is necessary as these tools give you the background to understand what you hear in communication. I am sure the education I had in school accelerated my ability to communicate in Spanish. So I guess I have to say both language learning and language acquisition are necessary to communicate but I do believe the acquisition is more important. A person can learn to speak without the grammar but one who has studied the grammar does not necessarily speak.
Bev
I have to say I don’t altogether agree with this article. Of course language learning has to be communicative and interactive, but to believe adults can learn language in just the same way very young children (pre-school age) acquire their first language, I believe is wrong. Small children are in a language learning window that begins to close (some say) as early as six. Around this time children begin to lose their ability to reproduce sounds exactly as they hear them. By adolescence it may have gone altogether. I know there are many words of foreign languages that I will never pronounce correctly. It isn’t only pronunciation that begins to diminish in childhood. I once knew a child of 21 months who was fluent in two very different languages (English and Cantonese). Presumably she knew little or no language at one year, so to acquire two languages so quickly and without effort, beggars belief. Obviously she was an exception, but could any adult do it? Even an average three to four year old can be fluent in three languages, given the appropriate exposure, e.g. from mother/father/ environment. I don’t believe even a gifted adult could manage that in such a short time and certainly not without enormous effort. When you consider what a child knows about language at three or four years, it doesn’t fit with their coginitive ability at that age. Generally they know the rules for plurals, past tense, subject/object, word order, verbal agreement and have an enormous vocabulary. Certainly they make mistakes but those mistake drop out quite quickly given exposure to the correct way. It is interesting to compare the immersion program in Canada, where I understand children learn all their lessons in French from age five or six. They become fluent in French but the grammatical mistakes do not drop out the way they do with younger children acquiring their first language before age five. Language acquisition (in early childhood) does not seem to depend on what other learning depends on, e.g. aptitude, motivation and the teacher. Language learning (in late childhood and adulthood) does depend on those issues. There are many failures.
Another difference between language acquisition and learning is the order in which the skills are mastered. Children learn listening first. Even before they can speak, they can understand more. Reading obviously comes last. For adults the opposite is true. Reading is usually the first and easiest skill to acquire, while listening is the hardest and last. Even students who know most of the words of a conversation (when they see them written) still can’t pick up any in conversation in full flow.
Most experts agree people don’t have instinctive behaviour, save simple reflexes. Animals have instincts, people have language. If language is not an instinct, then it is very close to it. We can say that an instinct is essential for survival, universal to a species, there are no failures and it happens naturally without effort or even encouragement. Of course I mean spoken language. Not every human society has developed written language and there are many failures in the ones that have. There are no failures to become fluent in our first language unless there is serious brain damage or profound deafness. Supporters of universal grammar believe we all inherit a pre-wired language onto which we only need to place our own vocabulary and rules during that critical early childhood period. Historically it has been essential for our survival and as easy and natural as a bird learning to fly. It needs only practice.
Certainly, as I said before, language learning needs to be communicative and interactive, in an environment where students feel free to experiment and take risks, but many students like to learn grammar as well. Given the choice they will ask for it and learn better that way. I think it’s necessary to be aware of the differences between the way adults and small children learn.
Jane
I fully agree with what you say about acquisition versus learning. I teach English to adults in Switzerland, and I try to engage them in natural conversation as much as possible – even at lower levels. I discourage them also from translating into their mother tongue, preferring to give a simple explanation of the word or concept in English.
I find that once students accept this reasoning or method, they are happy and willing to go along, despite initial difficulties and tendencies to translate. The ones who insist on translation or speaking to me in their mother tongue are the slowest to learn…
I recently wrote an article in a teaching journal in which I more or less “killed” language course books, for the very reasons you stated in your article. Using language course books is somewhat like reading a manual about cars: it may teach you the names and functions of all parts of the car, but it certainly won’t teach you to drive!
I keep telling my students (in English) “if you want to speak English – the only way is to speak! If you want to improve your listening skills, the only way is to listen!” Many students at beginning levels have the odd idea that if they read a translation of a listening (at the same time), they will improve their listening. I then ask them: do you want to improve your Italian reading skills or your English listening skills? Teachers are often forced (by the schools) to use language books in their classes, but there is a way around this – adapt the exercises to make them more ‘communicative’. It takes more preparation and effort on the part of the teacher but it’s worth in the end (happy, successful students – what more could a teacher want?).
Alan
Like my grandfather, an accomplished amateur linguist who spoke nine languages, I learn best by the grammar-translation method. I become very frustrated by teaching materials that give me plenty of vocabulary and examples of conversations, but no explanation of how the language is constructed. I always turn to the back of the book hoping for a reference grammar section. Just as it is useless to be an expert in the grammar of a language without acquiring good pronunciation, so it is useless to acquire a battery of model sentences (which is how schoolchildren are taught by the ‘communicative method’), while having no idea how to frame original sentences because you don’t know the grammar.
Dinah
I think it is an excellent article and I can certainly relate to it. I believe teachers should firstly find out what the students’ interests are and then plan lessons around them. With my own adult students, I’ve found going to the cinema, art gallery, coffee shops or the theatre has been a meaningful experience for them. It is certainly more fertile than a sterile classroom and I think this is, in my opinion, a very good way of making good progress in second language acquisition in adults. It builds up their confidence in their ability to use the second language, and they are storing up memories of various places and how they expressed themselves in that situation.
Joseph
I concur with many of the points raised in this article. However, not only am I of the opinion that there is far too great a reliance on pure academic, and rote textbook teaching and learning, but I also discovered, because of seeing what they are doing as a profession and not looking outside the textbook, there is a severe lack of English in real life situations.
While teaching in Japan, my students and friends told me that the outdated, reused in class, scripted lessons are very boring. However, by taking the students outside the class and letting them touch English, to experience, ask questions, they will improve at a faster rate.
Far more importantly, if the teacher talks to, instead of at the student, and listens to what they want instead of overpowering them, the students will be willing to respect you, instead of reluctantly following your instructions. They will want to come to class or take your lessons instead of it being an obligation, appreciate English more, and not be intimidated to speak to an English speaker when they are spoken to in English.
My very close dear friend and her 7 year old daughter are excellent examples of how, even in Japan, you can learn just as well as spending time and money traveling to Vancouver. That is if you remember the prime directive, which is that the teacher is the provider and the student is the buyer. Believe me for all those teachers who buy the idea that the school or materials used really are the key to learning, the truth is that 75% is due to the student’s purpose, tenacity and above all creating an atmosphere which is conducive not only to learning but also to experiencing English.
As for teaching English to children, spending the day in the park or beach and doing and explaining actions is the best way to learn together with their mother or both parents.
I welcome any and all contrasting points of view to what I wrote.
Hammani Mohamed
Every normal human being is endowed with certain innate abilities. Once a child is exposed to his society, his/her input data is activated and triggered. Then he/she can generate a set of sentences that have not been heard before. A child acquires L1 unconsciously; without being aware of the process of acquiring. Unlike acquisition, learning is a conscious process. A child, for example, learns language in a formal setting; like a class room.
Hadile
I agree entirely with Carlos, we can never reach the fluency of our first language when learning a foreign language simply because with the latter we lack the natural linguistic environment that makes the acquisition of a language occurs spontaneously and effortlessly. In my country, English is a foreign language and pupils meet it only in class for two/three to four hours per week which is a very limited time compared to the amount of time we spend to acquire L1.
Irwin
I could not agree more. I have been teaching English for more than 30 years to adults in non-English speaking countries, and have used the aforementioned approach. The problem that I have faced is that the university trained English teachers from the country I live in, teach grammar and conversation as separate entities, and do not teach English the way they learned their mother tongue.
Anon
Interesting. I do nothing but offer my students the chance to use the language that they presently have in their repertoire. I make them use the language in class to communicated in a variety of scenarios and forms. Grammar, New Vocab and Pronunciation I do on the fly.
I do wonder about the general level of proficiency and knowledge of so many ESL ‘teachers’ I encounter. I also wonder about the particularly American fad for pieces of paper. Again I’ve encountered people ‘teachers’ supposedly qualified to MA and PhD level who had poor communication skills, poor teaching skills and on one occasion did not seem to have any other language but English.
As a fluent second language speaker I try to see things from the learner’s point of view: what do they need, what might interest them and what are challenges for the. Moreover I always go into classes and initially find out what things in the language students find the most challenging and for efficiency what they really need to progress as language learners.
I think that one of the big problems is that English is now sold as a brand rather than a real skill which takes time to acquire (as most language does). Too often English is the means to a monetary end for people who set up shop as schools in order to make a lot of money. Teachers are exploited and all the owner cares about is selling the product regardless of whether students learn or not. Consequently so many teacher hires are people with little or no language teaching awareness or skills.
Language takes time and patience and thought to learn – those are things which are now in short supply in our very impatient and status concious world.
Bertrand Lah
It is usually said it is better to acquire a language than to learn it. we all acquire our mother tongue but why do some students speak it better than others?
Why do some students who learned the language perform better than others who acquired it?
Sam
Some of us come to life equipped with the right tools to acquire and learn a second language. Others are not so lucky and might need lots of practice and extra exposure to that second language. …
I call this the “popcorn” effect. You put a bag of popcorn inside a microwave at a desired temperature. But do all kernels pop at the same time? of course not. But why not? Because every kernel has its own molecule of water inside. it is only when the right amount of heat hits that molecule of water that each kernel would pop! Some will pop all the way; some will kind of pop and some will never pop. However, it’s our job as language teacher to find the microwave, place the bag of popcorn inside it and set that microwave to the right temperature…
Then all we can do is wait, just wait for the popping to begin!
Fran
I learned French by being sent to a boarding school in France at the age of 10. I acquired the language through the need to communicate. Snippets that did things (phrases) and then pattern matching by noticing where the snippets overlapped each other (words). Getting to grips with what a sentence felt like, replacing words with the ones I needed, straight forward correction by my peer group who were happy just to say it the right way when I got it wrong.
paxie
with relative to the above I can safely say a clear distinguishing line has been drawn between the two and has helped me a as a second language learner to note and embrace the difference with regard to the procession of my second language study
Desmond Jonam
Thank you very much. This has helped me in building my knowledge to another level.
Lori
I enjoyed your article. I agree that acquisition is something most at home language courses are missing. That’s why it’s so much easier to become fluent in our native tongue than a second language. We practice both acquisition and learning by growing up in a home with a specific language and going to school to learn the rules of the language.
I think an adult learner using a CD based program should try to find others who speak the language they’re learning and practice communicating with them. Though it might be hard to find speakers of more obscure languages.
Paul
Funny how education theory has so limited real testing, and is a lot of anecdotal speculations. Babies do learn quickly using listening and speaking. Deaf kids have a much much harder time acquiring language. These are facts. Trying to teach with reading and writing for a baby is clearly very difficult.
Adults trying to acquire a second language are often considered less able than babies kids but so what?. Adults have thousands of important issues going around in their minds whereas babies are like a clean slate so of course a baby acquires faster. Just because adults acquire less slowly than babies doesn’t mean learning grammar rules can improve speed of acquisition.
I alway think of my student who refused to simply read books and watch some basic fun videos and made himself tired doing 2 hours grammar every day coming into class, looking out the window saying “ now it rains” instead of it is raining. He forgot that present tense is not for the present. So instead of doing proper reading and listening and getting accustomed to English he convinces himself he needs more tortuous grammar. No pain no gain. Utter nonsense. You can’t convince some people even by pointing out counter successes as many people think they know what is best for themselves. Oh well it keeps us in work.
LUKMAN HASSAN JIGA BIRNI
Thanks so much it helped my brother in making his assignment.