More Grammar? Why not?

Here's Vincent of Street-Smart Language Learning, expanding on my thoughts about the spiral syllabus:

what really dances in my language-learning dreams are frequency grammars, or grammars that introduce rules based on how likely you are to encounter them. In your first pass around the grammar spiral, you'd cover rules that represent, say, 50% of the rules you'd typically encounter. This'll take you through much of the language, just as frequency lists do, but you'd still have quite a ways to go.

Once you're at 50%, you'd click a button (these would need to be electronic, of course) and then the grammar would suddenly cover, say, 70% of the rules you'd typically encounter. The additional 20% would show up in a different color so when you go through the grammar again, you'd know exactly what has been added since your last passthrough.

The only thing I know of that even comes close to doing anything like this is maybe working through old Transparent Language stories according to the level they were graded at. But that's not really the same thing, just a hit-or-miss shot at accomplishing what the frequency grammar would do, and we've found lots of hit-or-miss approaches - it's what self-instruction (and classroom instruction, for that matter) often seems to boil down to.

One comment: I don't think this would need to be electronic. Yes, to have the parts you've done light up, etc, it would be. But it's possible to create a well-structured book that does what Vincent's talking about. All you have to do is use the planning that goes into any textbook for a course with a spiral syllabus. The problem with spiral syllabus textbooks is not that they can't introduce content progressively. The problem is that the content is ordered from what is easiest to learn to what is hardest to learn, rather than from what is most common to what is least common. As a result, after one year you've got enough for some very basic communication and after two years you've got a pretty good overview. But, and it's an important but: After 3 weeks you may know how to say (drawing on my French experience) The apple is red. / The apples are red. / I speak French. / You don't speak French but you lack the grammar necessary to make a polite request for the bathroom or a clean fork. This becomes clear to any first year student upon opening a phrasebook and discovering that while he's getting As and Bs (good to average grades, for non-U.S. readers) he has only a vague idea what all those "Pourriez-vous" and "Je voudrais" are all about.

What we need, then, as Vincent says, is a frequency grammar. That is, first of all we need a picture of what comes up the most, and then we need some way - lots of ways might be found - to pass the information along. I think this would go hand-in-glove with a frequency dictionary, by the way. One of the things that irritates me with the word-frequency lists, after all, is that they're full of words like "the" and "a" and "if" which means that if as a language shortcut you seek to memorize, say, the first 100 most frequent words, what you've got is 40 useful words and 60 grammar words that you don't actually know how to use. Combining a word-frequency table with a grammar frequency table, you would have the tools to design a reader with explanations that really worked.

Vincent says this post is first in a series. I'll be curious to see what comes next. Until then, go read the whole thing and if you've got any bright ideas about an easy way to get the ball rolling on these, leave it in the comments (note that I check my comment moderation page every two to three days).