Currently having lessons with a tutor to really try and elevate my level in Spanish, this means me understanding more of the grammar and noticing much more as this is where I lack as I have never ever studied grammar.
how do you study grammar?
You wrote, “I have never ever studied grammar.” I wonder how this can be the case. How do you define grammar?
I don’t deliberately study grammar, but when someone corrects me on my grammar I usually ask them for an explaination.
so you know all the differences between “por & para” for example and all the “yo, tu ello nos” for example and all the cognation’s?
I real an old college textbook. Another alternative is the Dover series of Essential Grammar. You can also read how to learn Spanish type websites.
You learn grammar not by studying it but by doing it.
To start with, find a piece of Spanish text maybe 10 lines long. Now go through it and turn all the singular words into plural and all the plural words into the singular.
This will familiarise you with the grammar tables (get your tutor to give you some).
Second, find the verbs and change the tenses, e.g present into past, past into future etc.
Third, find the verbs again, and this time turn the actives into passives and the passives into actives.
Fourth, find the verbs again and this time change the indicatives into subjunctive and the subjunctives into indicative.
I don’t know Spanish but you get the idea. Grammar is fun !
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I don’t. I just look stuff up as and when it bothers me.
At least, don’t be afraid of Grammar!
It isn’t so horrible and boring as some people believe by mistaken.
But of course, it isn’t useful to study Grammar for Grammar.
We study a language, not a grammar.
And some grammar rules help us to use the language correctly - not more, but also not less.
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in chinese I’m in my infants level yet. But I tend to read stuff, and sometimes use the grammar wiki in order to understand why the sentence that I’m reading is written this way (everytime actually). So I’m exploring a lot of grammar and making sense of why this and that is working in a nonobvious way for me, and track them down, so I can take a look at them later on.
I think for your level of spanish… I would advise you to write essay and get them corrected, and challenge the corrector when they correct you especially when you feel like the way you wrote the sentence was correct.
Write a lot actually for becoming great at grammar. Buy a grammar book with corrected exercices, this will help you to bridge the gaps in certain areas of the language where you are still having troubles. It’s good for intermediate level. Beginner and advanced not so much of a usage tbh.
I think grammar is another reason why starting out with Assimil is so beneficial. They pepper in just the right amount of grammatical explanations to the lesson texts to give you the background needed to absorb the rules without having to force feed it.
But it’s also true that now that I’ve had that kind of experience with a couple of languages, I can now be even more hands off with grammar while learning Spanish, knowing that I will either pick up on the patterns, or just look up certain aspects as needed. In a way, I think those Assimil books didn’t just teach me a language, but also thought me how to study a language in general.
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I have the assimil Spanish book I may give it a read at some of the grammar explanations
The guy that does the free “languagetransfer” series on various languages does a good job at explaining the grammer in a non-technical way. You can listen to them off his website or on youtube. Anyway, many small grammer books are inexpensive and do a good job. I don’t look at them much any more since my main need is vocabulary, but as far along as you are getting, you might want to go into some grammer. Also, the spanishdict website is great for conjugations.