Learning Naturally: Can it be done?

From time to time, my students say that they want to speak just like a native speaker, and I warn them that isn't always a good idea. My students are surprised by my response, not realizing that when we learn a language naturally, we learn with it all the imperfections and mistakes that go along with it. In other words, when my kids were growing up, I didn't sit them down and explain all of the grammar rules including the difference between lay and lie or farther and further. And even it I had, my voice and ideas would have been drowned out by the hundreds of other kids at their skills who had learned it incorrectly.

So, there is certainly value in learning formal rules to a language in a classroom. Once you know the rules, then you have a conscious choice to use them correctly or not.