Grammar is usually fun…usually.
Our previous topic was the first in outlining the study sessions that we’ll need in order to study Spanish properly. “How to learn Spanish grammar” is going to be our second session.
Session 2: One hour of grammar. Learn one major rule or two small ones.
- Spend twenty or so minutes reading about a specific grammar rule or two. These could be anything ranging from the basics of ser and estar to qué vs. cuál Try to retell it/them to yourself and make sure you understand it/them. Rewrite it/them again without looking at the original material, just to be sure. Repeat this process of writing it out from the source, retelling it and rewriting again as many times as you can within this 30 minute slot.
- Allocate twenty minutes to recreating sentences using these grammar rules, again using the related grammar exercises (from your coursework) as templates, and apply the rule (s) as you write these sentences. Essentially you’re putting the rule into practise! Additionally, do an internet search for the name of the rule (s) or topic (s) and search for related exercises. Print them out or do them online. A lot of what’s on the internet is not that great, but a lot of it’s also really good, and it’s more effective than watching Who Wants to be a Millionaire reruns. While a lot can be said for using good sources and not picking up bad habits, the vast majority of people who are supposedly studying a language do not do their homework! So something is better than nothing, and if you’re reading over things and putting them to practical use, you’re winning! Here is one good website where you might find some useful exercises:
- Remember the beginner Spanish grammar book you were supposed to buy? Since chapters tend to arrange themselves around a rule or two, you could use these as inspiration to read over, retell and rewrite your topic, as well as using the actual exercises to get some ‘volume’ training in. When you’ve finished one book, get another one and churn through that one too! gain, it doesn’t matter how amazing the book is, or how much you learned from going through one of them start to finish. This is a long-term project (and a challenging one), so the most important thing is that you’re doing something.
- For the last ten minutes, you could pick a few verbs and spend twenty minutes putting each verb into a couple of sentences. Choose the ‘person’ (yo, tú, él, ella etc.) at random for each verb. E.g.: Hablo español porque quiero viajar en España (I speak Spanish because I want to travel in Spain). Él habla inglés porque su mamá es inglesa (He speaks English because his mum is English). Hablamos español todo el tiempo (We speak Spanish all the time). Use the dictionary for unknown ‘filler’ words. Your vocabulary will increase from doing this as well, so can you see how your knowledge of vocabulary does not rely solely on your vocab-learning session? If some verbs are stubborn, throw them back into the mix the following week.
When not specifically doing exercises from your book or online, what sorts of things do you write about?Learning a language is supposed to be fun, so aside from the stuff that your teachers and grammar books tell you that you should know, use your study sessions to have a bit of fun and get creative. Ultimately, you’re not aiming to talk about things in Spanish which are vastly different from what you like to talk about in English. If anything, I’d imagine them to be the same. So try to write about things you like, or if you don’t have a high level of knowledge at this point, at least make them relevant to the sorts of things you are likely to say!
The same is applied to verbs. In the first few weeks you should typically start with regular –AR verbs, –ER verbs and –IR verbs. E.g.: trabajar, estudiar, vivir, necesitar etc. Within these first few weeks you should also learn the most important irregular /stem-changing verbs such as ser, esponer, querer,estar, tener, ir, hacer, etc. Can you see the pattern there? The idea is to learn the common and useful verbs which relate to everyday things. But after that, it’s up to you.
Perhaps you’re into cinema, so you might want to look up film vocabulary. Perhaps you want to express yourself about politics, in which case you might wish to investigate politically-related verbs. Open your verb book or dictionary and see what you can use!