Is It Necessary To Learn The Grammar Of A New Language When Using The Immersion Method?

When you are learning a language you will often hear all sorts of different information about the grammar and if you need to actually learn it or not.

The reality is that you do need grammar and no matter how you learn the language, you will be exposed to grammar in some way. 

You can acquire it naturally, so in theory you do not need to worry too much about learning it, but this can be a slow way to do things, so while it may not be your biggest concern, it should be something you actively engage with as it will increase your knowledge and speed up your general progress in the language. 

Grammar Is Necessary To Use The Language

Before I even start to get into the question of if you need to learn the grammar or not, I think it’s important to recognise that grammar is very important if you actually want to use the language.

Grammar is just the rules and framework for the individual words to work together and without it we don’t really have a language.

You can’t escape grammar; it is always going to be there. Every sentence we immerse in will include some sort of grammar.

This means we need to respect it, but does that mean we need to consciously and actively learn it? Well, I would argue no, but I will go into that in more detail below.

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

You Didn’t Learn Grammar For Your Native Language

If we think it is necessary to learn the grammar of a language, then we need to remember how we learned our native language.

We did no grammar study and where able to become very fluent. I know you studied grammar in school, but that was maybe when you where about 11, and you where certainly very fluent at this point.

They teach you about it at this point as you are able to understand enough of the language to actually comprehend what is being explained to you.

You may also find that you are using grammar that wasn’t even covered in school. We all know when something sounds correct or not, which is why we can so easily spot a non-native speaker and a lot of this due to grammar rules that we are not even aware we are using.

I can speak English perfectly, but I have no idea why I say things a certain way. I just know it’s the correct way to say something …I just know it’s right. I cannot explicitly explain why I said something the way I did.  However, I will have used grammar and someone who has studied it would be able to tell me exactly why I constructed my sentence in the way that I did.

This shows you can have a very high level understanding of grammar, but also have zero knowledge of how the grammar works.

You can kind of compare it to driving a car …I can do that, but I’m not a mechanic and I have no idea how an engine works …I just know how to turn it on and make it go faster and slower.

Knowing how grammar works really isn’t necessary to speak a language, but you do need grammar to use the language.     

You Will Learn Grammar Subconsciously Though Immersion

The whole reason I say that learning grammar isn’t necessary, is because you will learn it subconsciously.

When you are immersing, everything you listen to and read will contain grammar. When you are listening to thousands of hours of content, some of that grammar will start to register in your brain, subconsciously.

This is exactly what happened to us as children. We heard our native languages so much that we could basically just copy it and through some trial and error we subconsciously worked out what sounded right and what didn’t.

If you listen to a child speak, as they grow, you will see this happening. They slowly build up the length and complexity of their sentences and they make plenty of mistakes along the way. There is no reason why you cannot have this same experience again with a second language.

If you are using the immersion method then your subconscious will be constantly getting bombarded with real life examples of the grammar in action. All you have to do is give yourself enough exposure and your brain will start to understand what sounds right and what doesn’t. You will be able to learn a lot subconsciously and this should not be underestimated.         

Studying Grammar Will Benefit You

While you will pick up a lot of the grammar naturally through immersion, you will actually benefit a lot if you try and actively study it.

Actually sitting down and studying the grammar should be something you do. I know it’s boring, but it can be extremely helpful.

When you immerse you are hoping that your brain will recognise some patterns and work out what is going on. It will do this, but it takes a long time and a lot of input. Think about children, it takes them a few years of constant exposure for them to start to make sense of things.

You probably don’t have a few years, but you do have a conscious brain that can comprehend things …so just study the grammar. You can have the knowledge within half an hour. Just sit down and read how it works and you will understand it right away.

It is like if I asked you to go out and find a McDonalds in a city you didn’t know. I’m sure you would find one after walking around for a while …or you could just look at a map before you leave and go straight there.

Studying the grammar will make your whole language learning more efficient and just consciously understanding what is going on will help your subconscious make sense of things faster.  

You Don’t Need To Focus On Grammar At The Start

I would suggest you treat your second language the same way you acquired your first.

This means that grammar should be something you study, but not right away. Get used to the language, try and understand it naturally and basically give yourself enough exposure so that you can have some reference points for when you actually do go and study the rules.

If you do this, you will actually understand it a lot better. When you are reading about some rule, you will hopefully be able to say “oh yeah, I have seen that happen” and things will sort of fall into place.

This is much more sensible than learning the grammar right at the start, where you it just a set of rules that you cannot reference to anything, since you have no experience with the language yet.   

Grammar Becomes More Important When You Want To Output

When you look at understanding the language and then actually using the language, there is a difference between how well you need to know the grammar.

If you are just immersing and you just want to understand what is going on, you can get away with having pretty much zero understanding of the grammar. You could just understand all the words and form that work out what is going on.

However, if you actually want to use the language yourself, you do need a much higher understanding of the grammar, you actually need to build the sentence and put the words in the right order. If you don’t know the basics of grammar, then you are just going to be saying a lot of words in an incoherent order.

This is again why I think it isn’t necessary to learn grammar …right away. Focus on understanding the language first, then when you want to start actually speaking yourself, you should look at the grammar and start getting a more conscious understanding of how it works, since you actually need it more then to talk.

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

Conclusion

Hopefully now you can see that it isn’t necessary to learn grammar, but it is also totally something you should be doing.

Really what I am saying is don’t get too worried about it right away. Just try and enjoy the language and give yourself some time to get used to it, then when you are starting to get comfortable, you can start looking at the grammar.

It will help you by studying it, so while it may not be fully necessary, it is sensible to try and help yourself, so don’t be scared to look at it. 

(You can read more about – How To Make Learning Grammar Easier)