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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To become good at grammar, there are three things to do:
1. Learn the rules
2. Read what other good grammarians have written. Choose a level suitable for your level of development. Don't try to read anything too difficult.
3. Practise, practise, practise writing using the rules of grammar.
Use short sentences until you become confident using longer sentences and one day you will be very good at English grammar.
Good luck.
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.
You should learn 'enough' grammar to understand and use English.
How much is 'enough' will be different depending on your native language.
For example, if your first language is French or French you need to learn less English grammar than if your first language is Russian and if your first language is Chinese you're probably going to have to learn a lot of English grammar.
You see, the thing is that if you're from Europe and your mother tongue is a European language a lot of the grammar will be the same in English and in your native language. Like, the verb tenses, they may be different in English than they are in Russian but the notion of verb tenses is still familiar to us, while for someone whose first language is Chinese the very notion of verb tenses and that a different form of the verb should be used depending on whether you're talking about something that happens regularly or something that happened yesterday can be completely alien.
Or if your first language is French you'll be familiar with articles and what they do, but for a Russian it's a completely alien concept so if you're Russian you need to spend a lot of time learning the basics about what the articles are and what they're needed for, because in Russian we simply don't have them at all.
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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Grammar's not just about speaking, it's also about understanding.
I was once sitting in on an 'advanced' English class in which they were reading some Irish short stories from the early 20th century 'for practice' and in one story there was this sentence that they completely failed to understand, it went something like this:
'She was not put off marriage even though her best friend's husband regularly beat up on her'
They interpreted this sentence as 'she did not postpone her own marriage' - it didn't really make much sense in that context but all the class including the teacher went with this interpretation.
Why? Obviously, because their grasp of English grammar was lacking, the fact that 'was not put off' is a passive verb and means something completely different just went totally unnoticed by them.
I have been teaching English for over 25 years and in the Sultanate of Oman as well..
i was teaching grammar as a separate lesson and then it was tedious to the learners.
Currently do it as a complement of the lesson never as a seperate lesson
SO the learners talk within 50 hours of lessons..SO drop this idea of
grammar lesson in an airtight compartments
//Incorporate it in the lesson They love it
I agree with dkh.Soufian. Of course to study grammar can be very boring and hard to endure studying continuously. However, Beginner need to study at least a basic grammar to start reading and understanding English. We are foreigners using another language, so we live in a different area with the children living in English language countries. It is not easy to be exposed to English as much as them. That means we can not listen to English as much as them. So because we study in another countries speaking other language, I think we should study grammar first to even study basic English
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