The opinions of the language learning community on the efficacy of using grammar instruction vary greatly.
Some consider it a needless distraction, useful only at the very beginning, while others consider it essential, and continue to study it well into the intermediate stage.
Most people sit somewhere in-between.
As a rule of thumb, you can get away with studying grammar less and less as you progress, but it will be helpful to occasionally or even continually refer to grammar explanations when you notice something and you are not sure why it is formed that way.
If you want to minimise the usage of grammar instruction, good technique is required. You will need to make sure you are noticing grammatical forms and incorporating native-like elements into your speech and writing.
Learning grammar… Do I have to?
There is no one-size-fits-all solution; in other words, we all learn differently, and some methods will work well for some and not so well for others. If true, this statement brings up a serious issue: language classes typically cater to one type of student.
If you’re not the ideal learner for the method used in a particular language school, too bad. You might feel discouraged and give up since the kid next to you seems to be doing so damn well, and you’re not. You weren’t born with the “language gene,” after all.
While we all do learn differently (up to a certain degree), the experience of numerous highly successful language learners point to a similar direction: focusing on grammar at first is simply not the way to go. Does that mean you don’t have to learn grammar at all? Not really. Just later, and with moderation.
So how should I approach grammar?
Think of language learning from a top-down approach. You look at the big picture first, and then as you go, you figure out the details.
This is similar in many ways to the strategy of guessing based on past experience, also known as inductive reasoning, and it’s awesome. In fact, as Kathryn Schulz (a famous writer) says, it’s the engine that drives the entire miraculous machinery of human cognition.
The theory that you should add the suffix “-ed” in order to form a past tense verb in English, for example, is a brilliant inductive inference. It’s largely correct, it teaches you a huge number of words in one fell swoop, and it’s a lot less painful than separately memorizing the past tense of every single verb out there.
Of course, it also means that sooner or later you’re going to say things like “runned” and “eated” and “swimmed”. Big deal! But really, you’ll get yourself understood anyway, and you’ll eventually overcome these relatively small mistakes.
Grammar makes sense only if you’ve been exposed to the language for a reasonable length of time. Studying grammar until you know it perfectly wouldn’t help you in the slightest bit if you had no words to fill it in, or confidence to use what you know with actual human beings.
A general advice for beginner second-language-learners when it comes to grammar is simple: Don’t make it a priority, or better yet, skip it and come back to it later, after you have already gained the confidence to speak using set phrases and gotten a feeling for the language in a real context.
You don’t have to make grammar a priority. Think about it: why exactly are you learning a foreign language? If it’s to actually communicate with human beings, you should consider mostly skipping grammar and coming back to it at a later point.
The best thing with this approach is that you’ll get all those “ha-ha!” moments. After having been exposed to the language for a while, you’ll read about a certain rule and then suddenly all the pieces of the puzzle will fall into place.
That’s an approach that some language methods are based on.
You also need to understand that people, especially native speakers of your target language, are highly unlikely to be impressed by your grammatical prowess. In fact, it can at times serve as a dividing bridge between you, the “foreigner” who’s learning to speak the local language, and the locals.
In many languages, spoken language is in fact almost entirely different from the written one. Speaking the “written version” of the language will make you sound foreign and unnatural.
On the other hand, if you sound natural when you speak, people will be honestly impressed and feel closer to you.
In the end, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to language learning. But, if there’s one common thread that seems to bind a huge majority of successful language learners, it’s the fact that they don’t make grammar a priority.
They tend to learn more inductively and take a top-down approach to language learning.
