How to Understand Grammar in Various Languages

Опубликовал Admin
21-10-2016, 01:25
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Grammar is either a "love it or hate it" thing - a lot of language teachers swear by it, a lot of adults recall it with horror from language classes in school and swear that it never helped them. But apart from a bad pronunciation, mangled grammar can be the worst hindrance in understanding and being understandable. And, well, if eight year old native speakers who still struggle with tying shoe laces can do it, how bad can it be?

Steps

  1. Learn basic grammar terms. If you don't know what a noun, a verb, an adjective or an article is, even very basic grammar instructions will just be confusing.
  2. Be aware of your own language's grammar. Which tenses are there and which are actually used most? How many cases does your language have and what are they used for? Both "you run" and "you are running" indicate an action taking place in the present, but what is the difference? Become aware of the fact that meaning is carried not only in the vocabulary but also in the grammar, and that there are forms of grammar which turn up rarely and others which are used all the time.
  3. Learn one pattern at a time.This is how the above mentioned 8-year old (and you, for that matter) learned grammar: our brains are very, very good at recognizing patterns and using them. For example, someone who just learned the pattern [ person + form of "be" + verb + "-ing" ] for an action just taking place, should build as many variations of that as possible, using as much of the vocabulary already learned as possible.
  4. Vary your learning material and your practice strategy. One of the beauties of the Internet is: language learning material without end. Clips of your favorite movie or TV show dubbed in French, German, Italian or possibly Korean, audiobooks in various languages, Wikipedia and wikiHow articles on your favorite subject of interest in various languages and so on.
    • In the above example, a good first step is to read a text in the language you are learning and mark all the examples you find. Write them down and sort them (by gender, meaning or whatever makes sense to you). Read aloud. Write and speak simple examples. Listen to a text and try to hear examples of the pattern you are just learning.
    • Keep in mind that some video or audio players allow for slower replay; in that case, an audio played at 90% or even 80% of its original speed sounds slightly odd, but not too bad, and is easier to understand.
  5. Keep your goal in mind. Do you want to just academically understand the language or speak the language? In the first case, working your way through a primer and using some examples to anchor the grammatical structures in your mind might be the best strategy. If you want to speak, 50 percent of the grammar most used in the target language learned well will be far more useful than the entire grammar sitting in your brain as theoretical knowledge. And that means learning lots and lots of slightly different examples.

Tips

  • Keep in mind that your mind will kick out what you don't use. Your first practice of a grammatical structure should be simple ("We are writing"). Once you are comfortable with that, incorporate what you learned earlier ("We are writing a letter to our friends").
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