Why Is Grammar Always The Hardest Part Of Language Learning

When it comes to studying a new language grammar is often see at the hardest part, which can be true at times, but honestly this is more to do with our perception of things and more importantly how we actually learn the grammar.

A lot of the time we approach grammar from the wrong angle and this makes it more difficult for ourselves. I will go through why we think it is so hard and you will quickly see that is not actually because the grammar is hard.

You Are Learning Grammar Too Early

One of the biggest reasons why you are finding grammar so difficult is because you are focusing on it too heavily, too early on in your language journey.

It is very common for courses and textbooks to really lean into grammar at the start and there is a real misconception that to learn a language, you must first understand the grammar. This is not true and the fact that so many people find grammar so difficult is totally down to learning it too early.  

Pretty much everything I talk about below will be based around the fact that the grammar is taught to you too early on and you will find that if you just hold back and wait a while to really study it, you will find it a whole lot easier, maybe even enjoyable.   

You Have No Reference In The Language Yet

The single biggest reason why you struggle with grammar is because you have no reference points to make sense of it.

If I tell you X is Y …that doesn’t really mean anything you to. You don’t know what X is referring to and you certainly don’t know what Y is, there is no real context and this is exactly how most of us are taught grammar, so of course it makes no sense.

The only way around this is to have some engagement with the language first, of course you will not understand a lot, and maybe can only understand some very simple things, but this is still giving us some context of the language, we can actually see it working. Then later on when it is explained to us, we can start to understand why X was Y,  we will have seen an example and while it may not be fully clear, at least now we have some reference to try and make sense of it.

What normally happens is that we don’t have this reference, so we compare the grammar to what we do know …our own language. However, our language works differently, so of course it doesn’t make any sense and only makes things more confusing for us.    

The Rules Can Seem Random

Grammar is basically a set of rules and they often seem very random, which can make them difficult to grasp.

Again this is linked to having no reference in the language, so these rules seem even stranger as you have not seen them in action. Again we will also compare these to our own language and it really isn’t going to make any sense when we do as of course they are going to be very different.

You will probably find that this “randomness” can be found in your own languages grammar, but since you know it to a native level, it just seems “normal”.

I am sure if you asked anyone learning your native language they would think the grammar is crazy, I know many English learners certainly say this about English.

Your Memory Is Overwhelmed

Your memory plays a huge part in language learning, both consciously and unconsciously and it can be really overworked at times.

Adding grammar on top only increases this workload and it can quickly cause you to be overwhelmed and makes things feel more difficult.

A lot of grammar is just a concept, or a rule, which you can’t really tie to anything in the same way you can with vocabulary and its meaning.

This just makes remembering it harder, which of course adds to the memory overload and that feeling of being overwhelmed will quickly come and make everything become a struggle.

Grammar Is Either Right Or Wrong

You also must remember that grammar is pretty black and white.

It’s either right or wrong; you can’t really have “close enough” and this automatically makes it seem harder as there is no real room for error, you have to get it 100% right and it is not forgiving if you fail to achieve this.

Of course it is important to get the other areas of the language correct, but you can usually get close enough to perfect and it will be fine, a slight spelling mistake or mispronunciation isn’t too bad compared to using the grammar in the wrong way. 

Grammar Is Boring

For a lot of us, grammar is boring. I know some of you will think the total opposite of this and love grammar, but I think it’s safe to the  vast majority think it is boring.

Whatever you think, you can’t really deny that it is a dry topic at times, it’s just a bunch of rules and for a lot of us it just an annoying hurdle we need to climb over to get to the good stuff in the language.

There is just a negative stigma attached to grammar and the fact that we think it is boring is going to instantly make it feel harder to do.

Why Grammar Isn’t Always The Hardest Part Of The Language

I think it is easy to get caught up in grammar and think it’s really hard, but the reality it is not always the hardest part of the language and there are a number of reasons why this is so.

Firstly, there is only so much grammar. If you spend long enough with the language, you are going to pretty quickly be exposed to every aspect of it. You only then need to get used to it, it doesn’t keep going on forever.  

You will also find that you can do a lot in a language, with very little grammar. I think you could communicate quite a lot with zero grammar and a 100 words …where you would not quite have the same effect knowing 100 grammar points and zero words. 

This really means that while grammar is important, you don’t need to worry about it right at the start. You can actually get to a pretty high level in the language with very little grammar, and then start trying to make sense of it then.

You could also go slowly and increase your levels as you improve, slowly uncovering new grammar points as you go. This is probably the best way to do and it will not seem as difficult. Too many people think you need to master the grammar up front and this really isn’t true. Focus on understanding the vocabulary and over time you will come to discover little parts of the grammar and you can slowly piece things together.

Conclusion

So hopefully you can now see why grammar may appear to be difficult, it is mostly down to how we go about learning it and the reality is that we do not make it easy for ourselves.

If we stop worrying so much about it and instead focused on just trying to learn some words, we would eventually know enough of the language where the grammar would not seem so difficult and we might actually start to be find it enjoyable.

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