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How to use a grammar | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5316 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 9 of 29 18 November 2011 at 5:04am | IP Logged | ||
I think a desire to communicate will lead to a necessity to use the grammar notions found in your manuals. Or else, when you see a structure, ask yourself how it can help you express yourself. Make it meaningful for you, in your context. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jasoninchina Senior Member China Joined 5166 days ago 221 posts - 306 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Italian | Message 10 of 29 18 November 2011 at 6:27am | IP Logged | ||
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@snowflake The grammar workbook is the only thing pulling me along at the moment. But like I said, it's the speaking part that I'm having trouble with. I can recongize the grammatical structures in writing or when listening, but struggle to utilize them myself when speaking.
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| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4844 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 11 of 29 19 November 2011 at 5:47pm | IP Logged | ||
Is it too obvious to say that it looks like what you need is more practice speaking? Reading a grammar and doing exercises will help, of course, but they will mainly improve your reading and writing skills. To give a more practical answer: I would suggest picking a structure of the day (or week), and just keep finding excuses to use that structure in speech. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jasoninchina Senior Member China Joined 5166 days ago 221 posts - 306 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Italian | Message 12 of 29 20 November 2011 at 3:30am | IP Logged | ||
Not at all. I definitely need to speak more. It's very frustrating to live in the country of your L2 and not speak as much as you would like. I am fairly busy most of the time teaching English. I do have a tutor who I meet with twice a week and often try to go out and use the language, but it's not enough in my opinion. I'd really like to find some ways to practice speech on my own. As an English teacher, most of my classes occur on the weekends and at night. Which of course is when most people will have free time. My free time is during the weekdays when most people are working. To get around this, I often go to the neighboring college and make conversation with students out playing basketball or something. But this is limited. Being an English teacher can be a little rough when it comes to socializing. But enough of my rant... Edited by jasoninchina on 20 November 2011 at 3:31am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Icaria909 Senior Member United States Joined 5526 days ago 201 posts - 346 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 13 of 29 26 November 2011 at 5:48am | IP Logged | ||
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I try to spend 15 minutes a day reading about one chapter from my grammar book. The first
time you finish the book, you have a pretty good idea about the language's grammar. By the time you've gone through it two or three more times, it becomes much easier to see the connections between grammatical concepts and you'll remember most of it. If you still have trouble, try rewriting the chapter in your own words without referencing the book. That will give you a pretty good idea of what you don't really understand and what you need to work on. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| cpnlsn88 Triglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4972 days ago 63 posts - 112 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Spanish, Esperanto, Latin | Message 14 of 29 12 December 2011 at 11:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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How much one gets from a grammar depends on a number of variables. You'll get a lot more out of it if you've a good grounding in grammatical terms in your own and preferably another language - otherwise you have start learning the language of grammar itself!!
Another very important variable is to have what I refer to as 'massive exposure' by which I mean you've listened to and read a lot and continue to do so. In a sense if you read a construction in a grammar that won't mean you've acquired it so in that sense grammar study can lead to frustration. My views on grammar owe alot to Stephen Krashen though not 100%. I think there are two systems (at least) involved. One is a tacit, intuitive sense of language, the second is more formal and conscious. If all of your grammatical knowledge is at the formal, conscious level it will take a lot longer to recall the grammatical systems involved and one can become preoccupied with accuracy to the point of being over aware of mistakes and this can seriously hinder fluency, leading to a loss of confidence. So in my mind's eye grammar study should not exceed 10% of the contact with the language (reading, listening etc). This is just my view of things. It kind of leads to (say) seeing a construction or point of grammar many, many times (20-100) and then studying it in a formal way, followed again by many, many instances of exposure. This way when you meet the point of grammar in a formal setting you've already come across it somewhere so it's not totally new and after (hopefully) understanding it better and, in the end, at a more intuitive level. Osmosis will, in my view, go along way, but formal study of grammar can help the process, especially where the expressions are distinct from your native langauage and need a bit more working on. I think grammar's a great way to develop usage. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6532 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 15 of 29 13 December 2011 at 12:31am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, if you can't speak as much as you'd like to, try to make writing fluency your focus. If you can write it without thinking, it's easy to go to being able to say it without thinking. Well, Mandarin is different from Spanish in this regard, but still.
I'm in the same situation, in all my Romance languages I can understand a lot more than I can say. I'm also quite shy and I don't have any plans to go to these countries yet (though my mum wants to go to Italy), so I've made writing fluency my first target. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jasoninchina Senior Member China Joined 5166 days ago 221 posts - 306 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Italian | Message 16 of 29 13 December 2011 at 12:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's interesting you should say that. The last few weeks I have been journaling in Chinese. Every time I sit down to write, I have been trying to put in more and more new sentence structures. Part of my problem is that I have a habit of relying too heavily on elementary grammar. This gives me a chance to try out new things and have it looked at by my tutor.
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