Don't foreigners learn grammar?

Many zero-based friends think that learning English does not need to learn grammar, because they have been tortured to death by grammar problems since childhood. What adverbial clause, subject clause, object clause and subjunctive mood are all confused by this noun, and it is boring to learn grammar.

But I want to ask you, do you have this feeling? I know this sentence. Why don't I understand it?

In my own words, for example:

A desire to illuminate reality may suddenly give way to the desire that we think of as novelists and scientists to accurately and concretely record the structure and texture of a flower.

Some students said, Mr. Egg, there are still new words in it. I'll show you all the meanings of the new words and see if you can understand this sentence.

Suddenly; Desire, desire; Consider; Novelist novelist; Scientists, scientists; Record records; Specifically and clearly; Texture. Texture.

Ok, the new word of this sentence has been solved, but I want to ask you, can you understand this sentence?

02

Let's talk about the misunderstanding of grammar by ordinary English learners:

Myth 1: Grammatical rules are so boring that I don't want to know those terms at all;

Myth 2: Grammar is not important, I just want to speak fluent English, and grammar is not important;

Myth 3: foreigners speak English without paying attention to grammar at all; And they don't learn grammar.

Let's talk about my opinion.

Positive solution 1:

Grammar is the rules and regulations summarized by linguists in a large number of corpora, and gives them different terms and titles. These are familiar objects, prepositions, articles, attributive clauses, non-restrictive attributive clauses, subjunctive mood and stressed sentences ... Gee, it's really boring at first glance, and a bunch of terms scare the baby to death.

But what Mr. Egg wants to tell you is that grammar is a speaking rule, which means that most grammar rules (except a few) are established ways of speaking, just a combination of words and sentences, not a scourge. Besides, these terms are not tested in the exam; In oral expression, we don't deliberately say these terms. Therefore, learning grammar does not need to be gradual and rote. If you find grammar boring, it shows that you lack the vision to find interesting things.

For example:

Do you often draw nude pictures?

-No, I usually wear a jacket.

This joke makes full use of the rhetorical devices of puns. What do you know in the nude? Nude painting or nude painting. There is an essential difference between the two. Nude painting is "nude painting"; And nude painting is "painting without clothes". And the respondent understood it as "Do you paint without clothes?" "No, I often wear a jacket (painting)." If you don't know the grammar, then you can't understand the joke.

Positive solution 2:

Is grammar important for spoken English? If it is not important, there will be no following embarrassment:

(1) "third person singular" does not add s, for example, he likes to do some sports. Is he a twin? )

I was born in 1990. (This is going to be a ghost, is it time to go back? )

(3) Regardless of gender, for example, my brother 19 years old, she likes playing basketball. Did your brother go to Thailand for sex change? )

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Almost everyone will make the above three kinds of grammar mistakes, so if you don't learn grammar, you will get deeper and deeper on this wrong road.

Positive solution 3:

Don't foreigners learn grammar? Let me ask you, have we studied China's literary grammar? No, no. Because Chinese is our mother tongue, we certainly don't need to learn grammar; As I said before, grammar is an established rule and law of language. If you immerse yourself in a language environment for a long time, you will naturally acquire the language and know how to choose words and make sentences. This is language acquisition.

But our high school Chinese exam has multiple-choice questions to correct grammar. Presumably many people can't choose the right one. Why? Because correct writing grammar rules need to be learned; What I learned is only oral expression.

Therefore, you can understand why foreigners should learn grammar when learning Chinese. Because the way they speak and choose words and sentences is different from ours, which is caused by the differences in thinking mode and culture. Similarly, when we learn a foreign language, we need to learn how to make sentences and how to express what we want to express accurately with words and word combinations.

Adults learn grammar to solve the problem of how to speak English, because adults are different from children and can learn through language environment acquisition, because their imitation ability and listening ability are already very weak. Adults are better at summing up and logic than children, and can analyze and understand the language through grammatical rules, so as to speak sentences with correct word order.

In fact, what I want to say is that our grammar terms are all translated versions of foreign linguists' works, not made by China people themselves.

Cambridge University has a grammar book.

It's called Practical English Grammar.

Of course, all in English, suitable for students with good foundation.

03

If English is compared to a tall building, words are bricks that we can see and touch, and grammar is concrete and reinforced concrete that we can't see. Without these, it is useless for you to recite more words, because you can't make sentences with words accurately and speak complete and correct sentences, let alone improve your spoken English.

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About the author: As a freelancer of English and writing, Mr. Egg is dedicated to sharing all the intractable diseases and foreign fresh information about English learning.