What is your way to learn grammar? Many people struggle to learn grammar. Yes, many teachers and language learners say no need to learn grammar. Yes it is possible not to learn grammar and speak as 4

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Val

What is your way to learn grammar? Many people struggle to learn grammar. Yes, many teachers and language learners say no need to learn grammar. Yes it is possible not to learn grammar and speak as 4 years child or worst and people would understand you. But if you want to speak proper language you have to learn grammar. The question: What do you think is an effective way to learn grammar? I would like to hear opinion both learners and teachers.

17 de ago de 2018 13:02

Comentários · 13

I follow a purely inductive method to acquire the language I'm learning, including grammar. I have tried other methods, and I find nothing to be as effective for me as attentively reading and listening to things just above the level where everything is crystal clear. I know many people think this is silly or impossible, but it's what I've found works for me and has helped many other people. I don't believe in breaking language into "grammar", "vocabulary" and other such categories, and approaching each one in isolation. I learn grammar as part of stories people tell.

17 de agosto de 2018

I initially do things the traditional way: I study a pattern (conjugation, declension, whatever) and drill it. Of course I don't master it perfectly the first time around. I continue using it (in speaking and writing) and review as necessary.

Also, some parts of grammar (e.g. conjugation endings) simply need to be memorized. Others (e.g. which tense gets used when) need to be understood. For the first category, I don't know, just do whatever works best for you memorization-wise. For the second, it's trickier. Reading clear explanations can be very helpful, but it doesn't seem to be enough (not for me anyway); it also takes a lot of exposure.

I just started learning Czech. This may change as I get more advanced, but right now, the Czech grammar that I'm learning is 100% in the first category. I simply "inherited" the second category from Serbian and Russian. (For instance, I know which case gets used when; I don't need to learn this. I'm sure an occasional exception will pop up, but I don't expect too many of those. So, I just need to memorize declension endings, and I'm good to go.)

17 de agosto de 2018

With English, I only learned basic/intermediate "grammar" in a language school. All I remember from those classes is that the parallels between English and Spanish were striking, but my teachers never pointed this out to me. After those 3 intensive 2-month courses, the rest was just input, input, input and more input: Music, movies, books and the web. I did lots of transcription with Pink Floyd songs and memorized almost their whole catalogue.

With Mandarin Chinese, I only took a 60-hour course in a language school and then forgot almost all of it. I just could not understand my teacher and the grammar book was Greek to me. I also could not fathom why she insisted in teaching me the names of fruits and the verb for "to throw water" instead of more immediately useful words. So when I came back to the language 2 years later, I gave the books away and decided instead to attend Christian meetings in Mandarin, talk to teachers through italki and create customized word frequency lists based on my reading materials, using text analysis software. I haven't touched a grammar book since that first failed attempt, and yet I passed HSK 5 last year and I'm now conversational in the language. Word frequency lists and the fact that I memorized 3,000 hanzi in 6 months have been crucial to turn any input into "comprehensible input".

As a teacher, I only touch on "grammar" (aka "patterns") when correcting essays or when the student has a specific question, because that's when he's ready for it.

17 de agosto de 2018

@Val if your problem is that you cannot give yourself a push no one will help you in this case ;) I'm very enthusiastic about learning languages and every new language is a problem for me as I cannot make up a story in a language where I know just 50 words. What can substitute stories in this case is questions. I just ask a bunch of questions about everything. It helps me to learn how to make questions in a a language and learn new words haha. Language schools don't work for me. So stories are good, because you think of a sentence you want to say and you don't know how to form it in a foreign language, you can Google, find examples, ask people how to say it and use your knowledge to analyse why it's said this way. This way you kill so many birds. You learn words, new rule , form questions and have a beautiful story in the end :)

18 de agosto de 2018

@Val

"Irena, that what I am wondering is how you study and drill it traditional way? What is traditional way for you? I didn't studied English at school, schools in different countries are different. Can you describe details, please."

Well, you have some pattern that you need to learn (typically, a conjugation or declension pattern). So, you first try to memorize it, and then do some fill-in-the-black exercises. I usually don't remember the pattern perfectly after doing this, but it does help my brain familiarize itself with the pattern. After that, I try to use the pattern more or less in the way that Miriam describes. I repeat the process as needed (but usually not all that many times).

Guyomar's approach hasn't worked well for me at all, essentially for the reason that you described yourself in your reply to Guyomar. (Actually, I tried doing something like that with German, and the result was that I simply dropped German, having been driven nuts by the number of elementary mistakes that I kept making.) But I think some people simply have a talent for this sort of thing (noticing grammar patterns, etc.), and for them, it might indeed work better. ETA: But also, some people have a higher tolerance for mistakes. Much of this is simply psychological. Every method involves some kind of discomfort. If you can't handle discomfort, then you can't learn a language. But you may be much more willing to handle some types of discomfort than others, and different methods will force you to deal with different types of discomfort. So, a method that works for one person won't work for another, simply because people differ in the types (and intensity, obviously) of discomfort that they are willing and able to tolerate.

18 de agosto de 2018

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Val

Habilidades linguísticas

Inglês, Hebraico, Russo

Idioma de aprendizado

Inglês

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