Questions tagged [grammar]
The grammar of a language defines the way in which its sentences are constructed by establishing its structure, syntax, and morphology
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Is it possible to learn grammar through spaced repetition, and if yes, how?
Spaced repetition is mostly used for learning vocabulary, but learning vocabulary is not all there is to learning a foreign language. Grammar also needs to be acquired, one way or another. Since doing ...
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French Grammar Book B1/B2
Salut!
My French is currently around level B1+ and I'm planning on spending 2-3 months in a French-speaking country and fully commit myself to improving my abilities. The goal is to have quite good ...
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Book or other resources on activities for teaching Chinese grammar?
I am looking for a book or other resources about tasks and activities for teaching Chinese grammar. There are book on teaching English grammar, e.g. Task-based grammar teaching of English by Susanne ...
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What should I focus on if I only have 10-20 minutes a day, with speaking practice once a week?
I have a friend who is willing to help me speaking a relatively rare language here in the U.S. (Afaan Oromo) once a week over the phone. When I was calling him regularly several months ago, I would ...
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What can teachers do to promote or increase mastery of 把 structures in Standard Chinese?
Each lesson in the Chinese series of texbooks New Practical Chinese Reader contains a section entitled "Master the following phrases". Below are a few examples from lesson 16 (in volume 2):
现在就去 - ...
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Grammar and language learning books/software for Irish
I am currently learning Irish with the help of the Android application "Duolingo". It doesn't teach me the grammar; it works with translating sentences. I don't think the app is very useful; ...
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List of Chinese "verb plus object" verbs?
In Chinese, many verbs consist of two characters. However, not all two-character verbs function in the same way.
One category of two-character verbs consists of verbs where the two characters cannot ...
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Identifying cases by rephrasing to a question – is this any useful for language learners?
Background
The German language has cases, but for many words some or all cases are identical.
However, interrogatives are distinct for each case.
Therefore native speakers often identify the case of ...
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How and where can I begin learning grammar and syntax in their most abstract form?
I am interested in learning grammar and syntax. I use those words because that's what I learned in middle school, perhaps what I'm really trying to learn is more aptly described by the term '...
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Are there learning resources to drill my Dutch?
When I was learning English we used lots of exercises that were referred to as use of English, which help you train some particular grammar.
Now, I am learning Dutch and most of the exercises ...
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How can an advanced learner in an FL context get rid of grammatical errors?
Imagine someone who learnt foreign language (FL) from the same language family as his native language (L1) for three years at secondary school and then continued studying this language at university. ...
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How can I put grammar rules into flashcards?
Putting vocabulary into flashcards is (relatively) a no-brainer: word -> translation, translation -> word. (Yes, it can be more complicated than that, but that's the gist of it.)
Grammar rules, on ...
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Are second languages processed the same way as first languages?
Everyone who is cognitively normal is capable of learning a language natively. The fact that humans seem to have an innate capacity to learn any natural language is one of the underlying principles of ...
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When studying German, how much time should be spent on learning grammar rules vs. vocabulary?
How much time do I need to give to learning grammar rules versus vocabulary while studying German, or is it possible to speak a foreign language without needing to learn grammar rules?
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How can I speak in impromptu situations without organizing my thoughts beforehand but still communicate properly?
I have a problem that has been bothering me since I became conscious of it. I am not fluent in my speech. This has really affected my confidence such that I'm not able to speak in impromptu situations,...
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How does the existence of a separate present progressive tense affect the learnability of a foreign language?
In English, the present progressive tense has its own distinguished syntax.
For example, the present progressive I am writing differs from the simple present tense I write.
On the other hand, in ...
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How does the existence of a case system affect the learnability of a foreign language?
Case is a grammatical category that can be found in Slavic languages, Finnic languages, Greek, Japanese, Tamil, etc. (The Finnic language Veps apparently has 23 grammatical cases, and tops even ...
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Is there any research on the effectiveness of learning verb tables?
I own books with verb tables for French, German and Spanish, i.e. for several languages with rather elaborate verb conjugations. At school, I was made to learn such conjugations for French verbs and ...
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What resources are there for learning Toki Pona?
I recently started using Memrise to learn Toki Pona, because I find that language to be very interesting. Memrise is indeed useful regarding vocabulary, but I think it is not enough.
Are there other ...
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Is there an online resource to exchange grammar corrections in one's native and target languages?
I have a text written in English (scientific). I want to ask somebody to give me some advice in writing and grammar. I have time to do the same for other persons in Spanish, my native language. Is ...
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What resources can I use to master German word order?
There are a number of tricky parts to learning German, but for this question I'm particularly concerned about word order. I'm using Duolingo and I often miss questions where this is the only thing I ...
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Slightly Incomplete Sequential Acquisition, Possible to Fix?
I have had my first exposure to English at about six years of age (and have used it ever since), and I generally consider myself a native speaker since I use it a lot (even if this is probably ...
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Explain contemporary high-school language teaching to me [closed]
I do appreciate the answer to this question varies on where you are in the world but I'm happy to hear of different approaches from different countries. I'd be particularly interested in responses ...
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What strategies can students use to learn grammar when studying independently? [closed]
I would never advise students to focus mostly on grammar, but spending some time focused on grammar can be useful (Paul Nation recommends spending 25% of time focused on language, including grammar ...
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What are the advantages of tables with declension endings to study a declension system?
Update: What I'm asking is if there's any evidence in the field of language learning stating if a mere table with declensions is useful for learning those declensions.
This is opposed to the usual ...
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Is there evidence that supports the idea that vocabulary is more important than grammar in conversation? [duplicate]
"Focus on your vocabulary first, then fix your grammar."
This is a maxim that has been drilled into my head over several years of my Spanish teachers saying this, but is there really any truth to ...
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Strategies to deal with declensions
Languages like German or Russian have declensions. However my native language does not have those declensions, and thus I have a hard time understanding their “point”, that is their added meaning and ...
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Is doing a huge amount of grammar exercises helpful for learning English?
Some books that teach English come with pages and pages of grammar exercises. Are these helpful?
I see that a few exercises are helpful to help you understanding the grammar. However, after that, ...