This small insight has given me courage in language learning. A child who has been immersed in the English language for five to ten (eight I think) years still has to round out the rough edges of their grammatical knowledge. They haven't been through a High School Writing class, where a teacher will tear their poor sentence structure and lazy vocabulary apart. And yet young children are very eager to talk! They will go on and on about their favorite this or that while they have your attention. And in doing so they are using their mother tongue. Practicing, getting a feel for the language. At some point someone will have to sit them down and teach them the depths of grammar, but for now they are perfectly able to communicate.
I must keep in mind the next several years this lesson:
To learn you must make mistakes. And lots of them. Because practice involves a lot of mistakes and corrections, but I am slowly getting better in those times.
Soli Deo Gloria,
- Jonah