How much study of grammar do you do?

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Fortheo
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Re: How much study of grammar do you do?

Postby Fortheo » Sun Sep 18, 2022 5:49 am

Carmody wrote:einzeine, yes I agree when you say:
grammar is your ally, not your enemy
I truly want it as an ally and good friend. However, it doesn't cooperate with me when I reach out to become friends it more often than not lifts up its nose and walks away from me. I truly want it as an ally but it truly pushes me away with cold indifference.

Which Routledge grammar are you referring to?
Essential French Grammar as shown here?
https://www.routledge.com/Essential-French-Grammar/Thacker-dAngelo/p/book/9781138338180


Which resources have you used in the past for French grammar? Did you finish them? Are you using any resources right now for grammar?
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Re: How much study of grammar do you do?

Postby Fortheo » Sun Sep 18, 2022 6:05 am

Le Baron wrote:For people who don't actively like grammar study and can't work with it, I don't know that it helps to have study sessions with it. For me it's always been more like consulting a dictionary to 'make sure'. There are some things right at the beginning worth getting straight, but after that I just don't want to study grammar.
In a lot of good learning material they just pare it down to essentials and do half a page of a piece of grammar, then some usage/exercises. The best grammar book I had was Nederlands in hoofdlijjnen. Barely 70 pages and A5 format. A really bare bones grammar showing you essentials worth getting down. Then when you read/listen you hopefully recognise these and you can check some of the grammar again and that circle of learning cements it.



That's how I look at it, too, and it's probably why I manage to get away with only 15 minutes of grammar study per day. I just look at it as a dictionary, as you mentioned, but dictionary of grammar patterns. Then I do a few minutes of drills for that pattern. It doesn't take long at all. After that I just try to keep an eye out for those patterns in native material. You are right that a good grammar that parses things down to the essentials is best for this approach.
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Re: How much study of grammar do you do?

Postby Carmody » Sun Sep 18, 2022 1:04 pm

First of all, I want to thank everyone for their comments and assistance. I am sure there are more glorious things you could be doing than discussing grammar with me, but your time is greatly appreciated.

Fortheo, the books I have been using are:

-Essential French Grammar by Resnick
-Grammaire Progressive du Francais by Cle
-French Grammar-A complete Reference Guide-by Calvez
-The Ultimate French Review and Practice by Stillman

To be honest I never felt I "finished" one; I just read portions that I think I need at the time.

Also, I believe my approach to date has been one of believing that since there are so many rules, I try to fall back on what sounds right to me and pattern recognition. However, kwiziq has shown me that method leaves a lot to be desired.

Since I have done so much reading of French literature I do have a pretty good vocabulary and some degree of pattern recognition, but I need more. I always thought that if it looks and sounds right, that I had a pretty good chance at being correct. I guess I just need to do weekly study of grammar as part of my regular routine.

But I have to agree with rdearman when he says he doesn't like tests......

Thanks again folks......
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Re: How much study of grammar do you do?

Postby einzelne » Sun Sep 18, 2022 2:12 pm

I apologise if I repeat myself (I think I shared with with you my views on grammar elsewhere on this forum) but you need to approach grammar as a physical training of automatic reactions, not as a mathematical problem to be solved. Just like bodybilders target specific muscles, target one point until you feel comfortable and, after that, go to the next. Just take one unit from Grammaire Progressive du Francais and go through it repeating everything out loud, not looking into the text. For exercises, don't 'solve' them — don't force it, it's unproductive. Just look at the answers and write them on the margin. Repeat out loud all sentences there. Next day, do the same thing. For exercises, if you don't the answer, just look at the margins and again repeat out loud several times. When you read books, try to spot the grammar patterns you're working on right now. If you like a sentence, and think it might be useful, write it down and add it to your repetition routine — I find that working with sentences you got from the books you read is way more effective in comparison to textbook sentences, even if they authentic, because these example sentences reflect your personal interests in the language. When you can repeat these sentences without any struggle and don't have to look at the answers written on the margin, you're ready to move on.

You don't have to follow the textbook order, you can only work on specific grammar points this way. You don't have to do it everyday. Yes, it's slow but, since you're retired, you're not in a hurry (and learning a language is a slow process anyway). If you add this routine, you will notice the difference. It allows your grammar to grow organically.

And yes, try to use the 'read and retell' technique with other texts as well — adapted books, transcripts, unadapted texts of your interest. But I think dialogues form books like Grammaire Progressive du Francais is a perfect starting point.
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Re: How much study of grammar do you do?

Postby Iversen » Sun Sep 18, 2022 4:19 pm

I studied French (and some other languages) during my study years in the late 70s, and that means that I got some ways to work with grammar 'under my skin', as they say - and the clearest result of that I always see grammar from not only the utilitarian angle (what good can it do for me here and now?), but also as something as a scientific challenge (how does the system actually function?). But the posiitve side of this is that I can't read a grammar without thinking about ways to improve or rationalize the knowledge I can glean from the books - or these days: from the internet.

I have mentioned my green sheets several times here. They are intended to sum up the essential morphology and some, but not all parts of the syntax. And I try to use at least two sources because seeing matters from at least two sides make me think - just reading a grammar may be entertaining and I may see some interesting details along the way, but I don't get active myself. Three sources is even better.

I can also choose myself how to present the data. One example of this: it's obviously practical to have the morphology of articles, adjectives and substantives visible at one glance, but 'big' grammars can't do that because they have to mention all the special cases. However I can choose only to show the regular forms, and then the irregular ones are on another sheet or I can find them in all their splendid glory in a fullsize grammar. In the Icelandic table below the problem is that there are both strong and weak adjectives and both strong and weak substantives - but those words doesn't mean the same thing. For adjectives strong/weak depend on whether there is a definitive article around or not so all adjectives can be both, whereas substantives are inherently weak or strong. And speaking about articles: Icelandic only has definite articles, but they be independent words before the adjectives and/or substantives, or they can be postclitic, i.e. used as postfixes. I have got all that information squeezed into my table, but the price is that there aren't any reference to the (relatively few) irregular nouns, nor any tips to guessing the gender of the substantives - and that others may not be able to guess why I made a certain table in a certain way.

Besides the 'official' grammars sometimes cling to conventions that don't fit the facts. For instance the accusative in most Slavic languages borrows many of its forms from either the nominative or the genitive, and therefore the only logical position of it in the tables would be between those two cases - but in German or Slavic grammars it is mostly put after the Dative. In my green sheets I can put it where I want it, and I want it between the nominative and the genitive.

As for the timing: I try to produce my green sheets early in my learning process because that's where I need the knowledge most. But I haven't made them for the Romance languages because I didn't invent them before it was too late. I did write my own summary of the French grammar when I studied French, but it was not nearly as concise as my green sheets. And because those sheets are so compressed I can use them for reference both when I work with texts and when I write something myself. The 'big' grammars aren't really suited for that, but I can use them to get more information or for use in more problematic cases. And sometimes I get curious about a certain syntactical feature, and then I study it using grammars and examples gleaned from texts or the internet, or I can read a whole grammar or parts thereof just for fun - but that mostly happens at a fairly late stage, when I feel that I have grasped the basics.

Icelandic-regular-nouns-etc.jpg
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Re: How much study of grammar do you do?

Postby Fortheo » Sun Sep 18, 2022 7:29 pm

Carmody wrote:First of all, I want to thank everyone for their comments and assistance. I am sure there are more glorious things you could be doing than discussing grammar with me, but your time is greatly appreciated.

Fortheo, the books I have been using are:

-Essential French Grammar by Resnick
-Grammaire Progressive du Francais by Cle
-French Grammar-A complete Reference Guide-by Calvez
-The Ultimate French Review and Practice by Stillman

To be honest I never felt I "finished" one; I just read portions that I think I need at the time.

Also, I believe my approach to date has been one of believing that since there are so many rules, I try to fall back on what sounds right to me and pattern recognition. However, kwiziq has shown me that method leaves a lot to be desired.

Since I have done so much reading of French literature I do have a pretty good vocabulary and some degree of pattern recognition, but I need more. I always thought that if it looks and sounds right, that I had a pretty good chance at being correct. I guess I just need to do weekly study of grammar as part of my regular routine.

But I have to agree with rdearman when he says he doesn't like tests......

Thanks again folks......



It can take a lot of reviews. I only do a little a day, but I do a lot of reviews and it's been over the course of about ten years. The good thing about your situation is that you're a great reader -- you clearly have an excellent subconscious understanding of how the grammar works. You might just need to do lots of reviews from one of your books to bring that subconscious understanding to a more conscious level.

You'll get there, just stick with it. I suggest sticking with one book that has tons of drills. You can refer to other books of course when you need help understanding the concept, but then I recommend going right back to your main book and chiseling away at the drills.

That's just my advice.
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Re: How much study of grammar do you do?

Postby Carmody » Sun Sep 18, 2022 8:39 pm

Fortheo

Thanks for your support; greatly appreciated.
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Re: How much study of grammar do you do?

Postby Stiv_MacRae » Mon Sep 19, 2022 2:51 pm

Let me take a swing at this question with the understanding that I am one of the least successful language learners on Earth.

I'm a French A2. At this level, my main focus areas are aural comprehension and oral production (reading out loud). I do the latter because it seems to help the former. I study the kind of grammar that assists those goals. That consists of only a couple of things, namely oral production rules and oral conjugation of verbs in all commonly spoken tenses. I stress "oral" conjugation, because it's a simpler problem than written conjugation. It's mostly awareness training with the idea that after a while, you begin to hear tenses. I don't do any bookwork at all.

My belief, perhaps faulty, is that grammar doesn't really rear its ugly head until you focus on writing. You can get away with a lot of shaky grammar when speaking, but when writing, there's no place to hide. I think of writing as a B2 level thing, and I'm nowhere near that. If I ever get to that point, I'll probably regret not having done written exercises earlier. But right now, I'm listening for many hours a day, and that's keeping me busy.
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Re: How much study of grammar do you do?

Postby Carmody » Mon Sep 19, 2022 6:34 pm

Stiv_MacRae

I believe I agree with you because I am hoping that all the Oral input I am doing will help me when it comes to whether the grammar in a sentence Sounds Right to my ears. Time will tell.
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