How to get rid of your negative feelings towards this unavoidable learning step and get moving
The Internet is full of advice on how to learn a language while avoiding studying its grammar. It’s everywhere. And for a reason. The way we’ve been taught grammar in school was boring. Who would willingly put himself through this again?
And yet, grammar is an unskippable step. Even to reach an intermediate level. It allows for more flexibility and understanding of how a language is built. If you plan on learning a language to an advanced level, it becomes even more crucial.
Enough rambling though, let’s dive in.
You can’t avoid its existence
No matter what you do, you can’t avoid it. Grammar exists and, even if you wanted, you couldn’t get rid of it. It’ll keep on existing as long as languages exist. And there’s no way languages as a whole will disappear.
The good news? You’ve been using grammar your entire life.
The moment you started speaking, you already had some sort of basic grammar stuck in your head. Your parents used some simple grammatical forms so many times you assimilated them.
As you grew up, you created more complicated sentences. Little by little, they became longer. Then, you went to school. You had to study grammar and despite your — quite probable — hatred of it, you assimilated it too.
How about now? Does it take time to reorder the verb with the subject when creating questions? Do you have to wonder how to express a reason? How to say a wish? How to tell your plans for tomorrow?
No. You focus on the content itself and the grammar naturally organizes itself around.
Not all stages were created equal
Why would anyone expect to have a good handle on grammar the moment they start? This is impossible. And yet, your handling of your mother tongue’s grammar makes your subconscious expect it.
Learning a new language means you are starting from scratch again. Yes, maybe the language you’re learning has a close construction to your mother tongue. But I can promise you, there will be differences in how they are applied. There will be exceptions. There will be false friends. You will be deceived many times by rules you thought you understood.
But that’s the game.
Just like a learner of English will think they understand its conjugation… before getting surprised by an “If there were rules that made sense, I’d use ‘was’ in this sentence.”
Does it make sense? Not really, no. And yet, the rule exists. If you use “to be” in a counterfactual sentence, you have to use “were”, even when the subject of the clause is a third-person singular subject.
You have to go through some simple stages:
- Total lack of understanding
- Comprehensive understanding
- Misunderstanding — Even though you believed you do understand, you were wrong in some aspects
- Understanding of the exceptions
- Full understanding of the nuances
How to go from one to the next? Studying and getting exposed to a whole lot of examples is a great start. But then you have to practice. Again and again. Make mistakes. Learn from those. Make some more. Get some more exposure. Learn some more. And finally, you could understand it well.
It’s not that hard. You’ve just been tackling grammar the wrong way.
Find the process that works
For you!
Don’t expect everything I tell you to be right. Don’t expect everything someone says on a random forum to be true. Read, research, try things out and find what works for you. Maybe even for you alone.
I’ve got my own technique and it’s worked wonders for me so far, helping me learn 6 languages. And proving quite effective for the 7th!
If you like reading a whole lot of input, then find some that use specific grammar patterns.
If you like learning through spaced-repetition systems, find — or, even better, create! — decks of cards on specific patterns.
If you like watching videos, look up some patterns and then go watch random TV shows or movies while staying on alert for said patterns.
Have fun with it. Forget the pain of school. Forget the look others give you when you tell them you’re studying grammar. Enjoy it and appreciate every step of the ladder to fluency. I’ll be waiting for you up here… if you’re learning one of the languages I speak of course!
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Mathias Barra is a French polyglot living in Japan and who has learned 6 languages and dabbled in numerous others. Being a curious child full of wonders is how he keeps on learning and can’t stop sharing about every tiny idea, even non-language-related.
Yuhakko 语학子 