Mention grammar to the average foreign language learner and they’ll shudder, groan, or otherwise balk. We all know grammar is essential for communication, yet the idea of “learning grammar” rarely seems particularly appealing. Part of the reason for this is that so many language textbooks teach grammar as a list of rules. In reality, though, these “rules” are just descriptions of the way native speakers communicate various concepts. That’s why trying to memorize rules without actually using them to communicate is a recipe for frustration.

Learning by Example
As children, we learn “Give me!” well before we learn what the imperative (Give!) or the dative case (to me) are. Later when a teacher wants to explain this thing called the imperative, all they need to do is bring up examples we already know. The teacher says, “We use the imperative when we tell someone to do something like, ‘Hurry up!’ or ‘Listen carefully!’” and we immediately understand.

Unfortunately, too many language textbooks try to explain grammar features before the learner has any real-world experience with that grammar. This works to some extent when your native language has a similar grammar feature, but when the concept is new, these theoretical textbook explanations fall flat. This is why English learners often struggle with cases or the subjunctive mood in certain languages.

Immerse Yourself
The solution is input: listening to and reading as much of the language as you can in order to collect examples of grammar in use. In the beginning, it doesn’t matter if you know “the rules” as long as you understand what’s being said. After all, any two-year-old English speaker can use “Give me!” without understanding the grammar behind it.

One Thing at a Time
So what kind of examples should you look for? Basics conversational phrases are a good place to start. Beyond that, though, it’s often most efficient to choose one particular bit of grammar you find challenging and collect examples of how it’s used in native text or speech. If you’re trying to understand perfect versus imperfect verbs in Russian, grab a native text and read through it to find examples of verbs in each aspect. Collect examples in your grammar notebook for future review. Don’t worry about memorizing them; just use them to help you understand how the grammar feature is used.

Try Translation
To speak correctly, you’ll eventually need some focused practice using each grammar feature. Without this, there’s a tendency to over-generalize grammar rules based on a few simple examples. “I eated my dinner” might sound correct to a little kid who thinks adding -ed is the only way to talk about the past. Avoiding errors like this takes focused, sentence-by-sentence practice. Grammar drills are one way to get this, but they do get boring fast. Translation offers a nice, creative break from repetitive, fill-in-the-gap grammar drills.