I want to ask about this question: How much should we learn about Grammar? Since it has many subjects to learn about and sometimes it makes beginners feel overwhelmed and desperate in which part they should start to learn grammar. Tenses, parts of speech, etc. Can anyone make a list contains which parts of Grammar that beginners should really understand?
For example, Is it important for a beginner to really understand parts of speech?
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From my personal experience, at my beggining of learning English, i start from very simple words like school, every day, then moved to grammar. i think it was a quite good method, learning grammar first, then collect vocabuary, as when you can use the grammar well, you can replace the words in a sentence.
I am fully agree with you Wade. Without grammar any language couldn't speak properly. I think first of all learn about grammar and after focus on rest part of the language.
My own experience is that you need very little grammar for adequate communication, but you can't do away with it completely, not if you are not in English speaking environment. I don't think you need to know the grammar terms unless you start reading grammar books but just to understand, for example, a different word order in statements and in questions. If your language is anything like English, then you most likely already know what noun, verb and object is. Learning grammar is not necessary, it is a shortcut to trying to figure out how to say something that doesn't cause confusion.
I would start by learning present continuous (because it's used more often than present simple), present simple, past simple, will future and maybe present perfect; the most common prepositions of place and a few others. A lot of tense problems can be overcome by using time markers. If you have a good vocabulary you can do a lot to "go round" the bits of English you cannot yet express in a more sophisticated way. I am saying this because that's how I survived in England as a beginner speaker.
Of course, it would be great to learn to speak first and then learn to read and write but I personally I prefer to learn to write the words down to help me to remember them. I think it is important to learn to write the words in native script, unless you're well versed in IPA because the letters in one's own language do not usually represent the sounds accurately: reading words or sentences in one's own script has the association of one's own language pronunciation. Obviously, that means learning to read the target language enough to read those words.
Of course we need grammar to speak! Otherwise our communication would be all over the place, like a train without a track to guide it. I meant to say that you need to study very little grammar. But the more grammar you learn and internalise, the more clearly - and possibly more creatively (even by deliberately breaking rules) - you can express yourself.
From time to time, I give my students grammar lessons. I mean about tenses, the different determiners and some prepositions. I usually concentrate on the speaking skill. I do that twice or three times a week. Teaching people who are non native speakers needs that. The problem is, most of these students are shy or afraid to stand in front of the others and practice in class. Honestly, they feel complicated about it, and on the contrary when I start any grammar lesson, they just pay more attention to that. I told them that learning grammar does not mean that you will speak English fluently. It is true that it will help us to some extent, to be accurate in our speaking and how to use the different verbs, nouns and other parts of speech correctly. On the other hand, it will not be the final cure to let us speak it fluently.
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Hi,
Thanks for all members who gave their opinions here. I appreciate all of them. Sorry, I cannot reply each comment.
Hello Ario. In our schoo,l we learn about simple vocabulary and the phonetics first...we start to learn grammar when we are in standard 3...
writing correctly is the last and professional section of learning English. in earlier levels it is not important to write grammatically .every one should promote input skills then will be able to speak and write .at intermediate levels can write compositions and hand it to be corrected by his or her teacher
if we want to talk like a native speaker or understand them we should learn all grammars atleast more than half of them .
but for a beginer i recommend first try to learn tenses because each sentece certainly has a verb and then try to learn others step by step.
hi
about grammar i must say i myself have never tried to study grammars maybe sometime which i faced with a structure which i couldn't understand.in adding i must say that i try to hear the name of grammars but i never had a deep study on grammars and never worked on their practices.i am learning grammars by reading different text , listening to podcasts and watching movies.i say again i learn the name of grammars not to study them.for example tenses:i learn that we have present tense and then when i am reading or watching try to find out that tense ,i never do practices for present
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