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Should I quit studying grammar? | ||
Tags: Learning Strategy | Grammar | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4949 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 1 of 22 28 August 2012 at 4:09pm | IP Logged |
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I'm getting to the point in my target languages "formal" grammar study where:
1. Native speakers increasingly are unable to give straightforward answers, because the matter is complicated and as native speakers their knowledge is intuitive. 2. Even if they are able to explain something, usually there are tons of exceptions, or simply no actual paradign or pattern, therefore, the "is just the way it is" response comes to play. 3. If there is a choice between A and B, both are at least colloquially correct. So increasingly I feel I'm just wasting my time on exponential research time for little return. Finally, even if there is an explanation of something at this level, it is so technical and convoluted it really is not useful to apply when youare trying to speak, it may in fact hinder your fluency from over-thinking. What do you guys do when you reach a level where consistent grammar study proves no longer continually productive? Do you just fully rely on learning full phrases, idioms, and colloquialisms to fill in the rest? I just feel that past the "advanced II" level (I'm finishing the 2nd half of my advanced books in the next few weeks), there seems to be no point to continue first because the only place to go beyond that is native textbooks, and those mainly will deal with proper writing skills and the like. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4707 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 2 of 22 28 August 2012 at 4:36pm | IP Logged |
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Depends. What is your goal? What do you want grammar study for? Proper speech? Just
peruse a grammar that covers the topic you're looking for. What is your actual level? There's not enough detail here to work with. If you're getting advanced then grammar study will concern details. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4949 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 3 of 22 28 August 2012 at 4:44pm | IP Logged |
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Oh, I don't need any precise tips, I was just asking what you guys do when (if) you ever feel proper grammar study starts to get too case by case specific and thus cannot be applied across the board, or when (as happens in advanced levels), there is more than one right answer to a construction.
I don't mind learning the details, I love that actually, and I like studying grammar. I guess my underlying question was if you guys arrived at a point where learning grammar gave little return on the everyday language, and thus should be scaled back only for when you write more formal material. Edited by outcast on 28 August 2012 at 4:46pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5219 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 4 of 22 28 August 2012 at 4:50pm | IP Logged |
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I honestly wish I could help but in my experience
1) Native speakers generally don't actually understand the detailed grammar of their language as most schools don't teach it...... but 2) grammar is fluid anyway isn't it? Most of the evolution of language and grammar is euphony, perhaps at some time in the past evolution of the language. 3)We are back down to 'common' usage ... when both phrases are grammatically correct and my tutor had to repeat two options at least 3 times in different situations to announce that both were equally correct. You posted while I was typing: So - Sod the books, go native. Edited by maydayayday on 28 August 2012 at 4:51pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Majka Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic kofoholici.wordpress Joined 4657 days ago 307 posts - 755 votes Speaks: Czech*, German, English Studies: French Studies: Russian | Message 5 of 22 28 August 2012 at 5:04pm | IP Logged |
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I would suggest to stop grammar study from textbooks and grammar books.
Go straight for native material (not native grammar textbooks) and concentrate on details and nuances. Read news and notice interesting formulations, read a book and look for interesting word connections. Go back to a grammar book or textbook only to get confirmation/explanation when needed. And if you have the opportunity, ask the native speaker not for explanations but for corrections. I mean ask them to reformulate what you said if something sounds hinky to them. This brings probably more at your current stage. Word of caution: Grammar awareness among native speaker varies, even some newspapers and books would profit from a good editor / proofreader. If you feel something is suspect, look for confirmation. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 22 28 August 2012 at 6:20pm | IP Logged |
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I would stop asking native speakers for grammatical advice, but continue to ask them about expressions and constructions without mentioning that you intend make order in the information you get, which magically will turn it into syntax (with irreductible leftovers becoming idiomatics).
Grammar books can be used in two ways. You can use them to gain a quick overview over the things you will have to learn, which mostly is useful for beginners (or even before you start studying a certain language). But even advanced learners can use them to put order in things you see or hear, or to get answers in cases where they wonder whether a certain construction is possible. Or you can read a section and then go looking for examples. In all cases it is important to use the grammar as a useful supplement to studies of genuine sources - reading it without using the things you read in it in the real world will be like getting the answers to a test without getting the questions.. it gets meaningless and therefore boring in the long run. EDIT: grammar corrected Edited by Iversen on 28 August 2012 at 8:21pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4701 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 7 of 22 28 August 2012 at 7:05pm | IP Logged |
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You shouldn't stop learning grammar. Grammar is not an endless universe you'll never completely be able to grasp. It's a limited system.
If you struggle with clarifications, find another grammar explanation, and another, and another, until you got it. Natives are good for practice and, if they agree to do it, to find out which structure is natural, and under which circumstances natives do use the structure you'd like to test. Japanese people might say 考えてみれば instead of 考えてみたら or 考えてみると or 考えてみるなら, even tho all those are grammatical. This, however, is something you will not learn from a textbook. Pick the right source for everything you'd like to do. Some things are no-brainers, like "you don't learn listening comprehension from reading" or "you don't get written composition right from talking on Skype", and some might need a minute of thinking through. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4701 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 8 of 22 28 August 2012 at 7:28pm | IP Logged |
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By the way, I think asking "why do natives pick this structure over than when both are correct" is an unproductive thought.
In this case, there's only the explanation the natives give you over and over: It is how it is because that's how it is. Germans say "sozusagen", not "wenn man es so sagt" or "sollte man es so sagen" or "im Falle, dass man es so sagt". That's the way languages work: speakers are running on an unwritten contract, negotiating the finer features all the time. Unless you are 100% natural 100% of the time, I don't think you can even discuss something like this with a native. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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