How To Make Learning Grammar Easier

Grammar is often seen as one of the hardest parts of learning a language, but it doesn’t need to be and I will go through some ways you can make it easier for yourself.

Don’t Worry About Grammar Right Away

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to get caught up with trying to master grammar too early on. Too many people try to learn the grammar to make sense of the language, rather than trying to learn the language to make sense of the grammar.

Grammar is important, I can’t deny this, but when you get too focused on it, it doesn’t help you. You need to have some exposure to the language in action, before you can really appreciate how the grammar works.

This means you do not really need to worry about grammar too much in the beginning. You can certainly read about it and know that it exists, but don’t obsess over it.

Focus on immersion and just get as much contact with the language as you can at first. The more you do this, the more you will start to notice little things and the grammar will sort of unlock its self. Then you when go to study it, it will make a lot more sense as you have some reference to the language and will have seen it working and everything will click a lot easier and faster.

(You can read more about – Is Grammar Actually Important For Learning A Language?)

Understand Your Own Grammar

While your own grammar is not going to directly help you with a new language, it can still be beneficial.

Studying grammar is complicated and doing it first in your own language is a good place to get some practice. The main issue with grammar is that a lot of terminology used to explain it can be a little confusing. Of course we all studied this in school …but who had any idea what was going on back then, let alone remembers it.

Really you have to ask yourself if you know what the difference is between a verb and an adverb? I certainly didn’t know, and spending some time learning about these concepts in English really helped me when I then started studying grammar in other languages.

I could basically understand what they were trying to explain because I understood the concepts in English; it really does make things easier. 

Keep The Grammar Simple

I think it is also important to keep things simple, the longer we do this, the easier things will be.

I think we kind of forget how difficulty learning a language really is. We are native speakers of our own language, which is an extremely high level and I think sometimes we assume we should be at that same level with the new language we are learning.

We often try and use complex language structures far too early on. We want to use all the same crazy grammar that we can use in our own language, as we want to be able to say very similar things in both languages.

The reality is that we are like babies in our new language and we sort of need to use the language like a baby. We need to keep things simple and just really focus on getting that perfect first.

We can move on to more complex language when we are ready for it, there really is no rush, in fact the longer we take mastering the basics, the easier it will be as we will have a solid foundation to work from.

(You can read more about – Why Is Grammar Always The Hardest Part Of Language Learning)

Go Slower When Learning Grammar

Going slower is very closely linked to the above point. We always seem to be in a rush to move on to the next thing and we are always trying to absorb more and more. This is a great attitude to have, but it can be more beneficial to just slow down and actually allow yourself to take things in and process them properly before moving on.

Going slow will still get you there, it might just take a little longer, but as I already mentioned, you will have a very solid foundation and you will find that adding more grammar on to what you already know will be easier. You will have more experience with what you already know and that is always helpful when you are learning a language.

Learn Grammar From More Than One Resource

When you do learn grammar, try and learn the same thing from a number of different of resources.

This can see boring or a waste of time, but you will be surprised how helpful it can be. Seeing the same thing explained in 5 different ways can make really make sure you understand it as it will give you a few different angles of the same thing.

I often find that the first explanation makes sense …but when I listen to another one, it totally changes how I see things. Usually I didn’t understand as much as thought and the second explanation can actually make the first one become even clearer.  

Taking the time to see things from many viewpoints will help you master it quicker as you will just have a better, more well rounded understanding of things.

Repetition Will Help You Master Grammar

Grammar is really one of those things that gets easier the more you see it. While this doesn’t really make it easier at the start, if you just keep going and just keep being exposed to it, it will get easier.

With time you will become very confident with a certain part of the grammar, it will almost be like second nature and this is exactly where you want to be. At this point adding more grammar on to the pile is not going to be too hard, as you now have that strong foundation.

Grammar really isn’t that hard, you just need to get used to it and repetition is going to really help with that. 

Conclusion

As you can see there are a number of ways you can make grammar easier for yourself. Basically don’t get stressed out about and just take your time slowly learning more and getting used to what you have learned.

Just focus on the other areas of the language such as vocabulary and the grammar will fall into place; before you know it you will be at high level in the language and will be enjoying the grammar, rather than scared of it.