Should you study grammar?

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Every school is different, but most will make you study at least one language, and they mainly attempt to teach you grammar. In my secondary school, from year 7 to year 11, we had weekly French lessons in which we would do general repetition drills and grammar exercises. For most of us, our first experience of learning a language is usually in these lessons in school. As a result, this way of learning becomes the norm when we think about how to learn a language. But is this really the best way?

There are two ends of the spectrum to this debate: those who exclusively study grammar from start to finish and those who never do it and instead rely on comprehensible input, which I discussed in another article.

Studying grammar – advantages:

You can build a good base of knowledge – studying some general rules of the language will help you get off to a great start in learning a language. It can help you get a basic understanding of how the language works and what you can expect going forward. For example, in Spanish, all verbs in their base form end in either “-ar”, “-er” or “-ir”, and each of these has certain conjugations. Knowing this about Spanish got me off to a good start, as I knew roughly what to expect along the way.

Great for short timescales – if you’ve got an exam in one week, then studying grammar is your best bet. Grammatical exercises and drills will be very good over a short timescale, and the more you repeat them, the better you'll become at them.

Can learn quite quickly – this is similar to the above point. Doing these structured exercises will allow you to pick up on things and remember them pretty quickly, which is again why they're good for exams that are coming up soon.

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Studying grammar – disadvantages:

Not great for long timescales – these rules will not stay in your mind for long unless you practice them consistently over a longer time period. If not, you'll forget them very quickly.

It isn’t that fun – this is obviously subjective, and some people may relish the thought of studying grammar; however, I'm not one of them (and I assume a lot of people would agree with me here as well).

Requires a lot of effort – you cannot do this subconsciously. You'll need to sit down with a grammar book, look online, or go to a class and make an active effort to try to understand and remember the various grammatical rules you'll be learning about. This is even truer if you don’t find it fun, as it'll be something you have to fight through.

It can make errors seem like the worst thing in the world – when you're studying these rules, you're doing so in order to avoid errors. This can happen so much that it can frustrate you if a rule isn’t quite sticking in your mind. It can also make errors seem like the worst thing in the world when they really aren’t.

It generally involves language that isn’t that common in the real world – as it is mostly found in grammar books or classes, the language will often be very formal. This isn't always the case for language found on the street among friends and family.

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Comprehensible input – advantages:

It works – everyone speaks their native language because they absorbed it through their surroundings, not because they studied it. This is why if a selection of native speakers took part in a grammar test where they had to fill in a word in a sentence, they would get it right. But if they were asked to explain why they chose that answer, they wouldn’t know why. They would just tell you “Because it is”.

It's fun – when you're able to read and watch things that interest you, it's fun instead of strenuous. You're able to actually enjoy the content you're receiving, and you even forget that you're there practicing a language.

Comprehensible input – disadvantages:

Not good for the short term – this won't work if you have an exam coming up soon. It requires a large amount of content and, therefore, a large amount of patience and discipline to keep going.

Finding the right level of difficulty can be hard– choosing content that is too easy won't benefit you, and choosing content that is too hard will only frustrate you. Finding the right balance is not easy at first and takes time to master.· 

My opinion:

When I started learning Spanish, looking at the grammar was a nice start, as it allowed me to slowly build up an idea of the language and how it generally functions. I got an idea of how different parts of the language work (verb conjugations, adjective placements etc). All the basics helped me. However, when I continued towards the more intermediate and advanced parts of the grammar, I had a lot of problems. It confused me, bored me, made me frustrated when I couldn’t understand it, and was absolutely no help to me. This was one of the mistakes I made: trying to study the grammar too much.

When I started to use comprehensible input, I stopped looking at the grammar. I'd take time to absorb the language, and this helped me a lot more than the grammar did. However, I then noticed another thing. Whenever I went back to look at the grammar again, it would make more sense and suddenly stick in my mind a lot more.

After spending a lot of time reading and listening to the language, if I ever decided to look up a certain grammar point, it was a lot easier for me to understand. It also made the process of learning the language easier than if I'd solely relied on comprehensible input.

An example in Spanish is the different forms of the verb “estar” in the past tense – preterite ("estuve", "estuviste" etc) and imperfect ("estaba", "estabas" etc). At the very start of trying to study this, I literally had no idea what to do with it, and it was very frustrating. After a long time focusing on comprehensible input, I stumbled across a video on YouTube titled something like “estuve vs estaba – what is the difference?”. I decided to have a quick look, and all of a sudden the explanations made a lot more sense. They made a lot more sense because I'd spent so much time absorbing the language that I was subconsciously picking up on when the examples were being used. This isn't me saying that I suddenly became a Spanish grammar expert. What I'm saying is that, in my opinion, the grammar was helped a lot by having absorbed the language previously.

This helped form my overall opinion on studying grammar. I believe it's essential in the very early stages, but not in too much depth. It depends on the language you're going to study; for example, if you're starting a language with an entirely different alphabet, you'll need to spend some more time getting to grips with it. However, for me, that phrase is the key: getting to grips with it. This doesn’t mean becoming an expert and studying every grammar rule on the planet. It is to have a base knowledge of the grammar that is enough for you to be able to use it and absorb it. Then, further down the line, once you start reading and listening more, looking back on grammar points is very useful as it can help cement your understanding.

Using the example I just used with the Spanish preterite vs imperfect tenses: If I'd continued using only comprehensible input, I'd eventually be able to use these tenses and understand when and when not to use them. However, this would’ve taken much longer. The combination of all the input I’ve received and looking at the grammar rules again made learning so much easier. An important point: I wasn’t going back to study grammar in depth; I didn’t spend hours grinding through a textbook. This was a quick video explaining the rough differences between the two, and it really helped confirm my understanding of the grammar rule.

Summary:

To sum up, I'm definitely more of a fan of comprehensible input than the study of grammar; however, I believe that it is wise to use grammar as a tool. You can't use it as your main weapon in language learning, but you shouldn't ignore it completely. You can learn a language without ever studying grammar, but you can't learn a language if you only study grammar. However, when you combine the two, it speeds up the process. My recommendation would be to spend about 80% of your time practicing without studying grammar (comprehensible input, output), and every now and then you can have a little check of some grammar points that you're still not sure of. The combination of this with your experience in receiving the language will make the process run more smoothly.

Key vocabulary:

Norm – something that is normal/typical/usual

Exclusively – excluding other things, for example “Rich exclusively eats cake” means “Rich only eats cake”

Pretty – in this situation, it basically means “quite”, for example “Emma is pretty good at baking” basically means “Emma is quite good at baking”

Relish – look forward to/excited for something

Subconsciously – doing something while you're not fully aware that you're doing it

Strenuous - difficult, tiring

Getting to grips with – becoming familiar with something

Further down the line – later in the future

Cement – in this situation, it basically means to make something more solid/strong

Wise – smart