Where Did You Learn Grammar? At School or Online?

[Deleted]

Language is a natural thing, you learn it by using it and being immersed in it.

100% true.

If you truly want to learn a language, first learn it in practice, then in theory. First learn how it's actually used on a day to day basis, be immersed in it, be bathed by it. Then later on, once you feel like you know it inside and out, that's when you start learning correct grammar. If you try and start learning a language through theory, you'll never learn to actually speak and understand it.

You know a good sign of when you've truly mastered a language? When you think in that language. Constantly.

[Tarsolan]

I got a basic understanding of grammar and English as a whole from games like Final Fantasy VIII and Metal Gear Solid 2 as a child.

[Reeve]

My partner always has me proof-read everything that he writes for class; he always gets excellent reviews from his teachers on his papers even without my help. One memorable example was a teacher that told him that she read his papers whenever she felt down to help cheer herself up. I've also read the papers that his classmates write (just a few), and I'm appalled at the terrible grammar and spelling of these papers. I feel like I'm reading something a fourth-grader would write.

Whenever asked to peer review a paper of another student when I was in high school or college, I'd usually get stuck, simply because I had no idea what it was they were attempting to say. That's how bad their grammar was. I'm not sure what those students were doing in their K-12 education that they couldn't string words together into a coherent sentence, or sentences together into a coherent paragraph.

---------- Post added 2012-12-14 at 07:28 PM ----------

Neither.

I know 4 languages and I have no theoretical knowledge of grammar for any of those, only practical.

Language is a natural thing, you learn it by using it and being immersed in it.
The "classic" approach to learning a language which focus heavily on grammatical rules is the reason why so many people have problems grasping a new language.
If you want to learn a new language throw away the textbooks, dont even look at grammar as it will confuse you.

Instead listen to songs, read, play games, speak with people and be corrected, actual knowledge of grammar is useless on a day to day basis.

This is how I learned Spanish, but because I never had any classroom training, whenever I write it, my writing looks like an 8 year old's. This is frustrating to me, because I like to think I can be reasonably eloquent in English. No one ever has trouble understanding me, but I do get corrected on my grammar at times in Spanish, and sometimes I hang for a second or two while I try to decide on the right conjugation to use.

[Endus]

Learned it mostly from reading and then improved my mechanical understandings while learning Latin in college.

For the most part, what I learned in grade school was either something I already knew from reading, or was just flat-out not true. There are a TON of "rules" in grammar that aren't, actually, rules.

Take, for instance, the whole "I before E, except after C, or when pronounced as an 'A' as in 'neighbour' or 'weigh'" rhyme. It's false. It's not only not true, it's destructive to a learner's understanding to teach them this garbage.

Weird, science, sufficient, seize, vein, foreign, eider, their, feisty, I could go on because I'm not even close to finished. It's so totally "not a rule" that it shouldn't ever be taught.

Others can be laid firmly at the feet of Strunk and White's Elements of Style, which was used as a grammar how-to for FAR too long. They made up large portions of that text. It's just bunk. Things like "never split an infinitive", which would tell you that Star Trek's famous "to boldly go" is grammatically incorrect. Or to never start a sentence with a preposition. These are NOT true of English grammar, and it was egregious of them to try and claim so. Following silly garbage like this would lead to people trying to "grammar-correct" works like those of Shakespeare, and given their resilience, I'd say Shakespeare had a firmer grasp on grammar and elocution than they did.

[Reeve]

Learned it mostly from reading and then improved my mechanical understandings while learning Latin in college.

For the most part, what I learned in grade school was either something I already knew from reading, or was just flat-out not true. There are a TON of "rules" in grammar that aren't, actually, rules.

Take, for instance, the whole "I before E, except after C, or when pronounced as an 'A' as in 'neighbour' or 'weigh'" rhyme. It's false. It's not only not true, it's destructive to a learner's understanding to teach them this garbage.

Weird, science, sufficient, seize, vein, foreign, eider, their, feisty, I could go on because I'm not even close to finished. It's so totally "not a rule" that it shouldn't ever be taught.

Well that's partly just because English is so fucked up. In most other languages, the rules can be reasonably followed. English is just a wonderful abomination.

[Endus]

Well that's partly just because English is so fucked up. In most other languages, the rules can be reasonably followed. English is just a wonderful abomination.

It's not really that much of an abomination. English has plenty of rules, too, and for the most part, it discards certain concepts that don't really have much relevance, like the idea of gender for nouns (thinking of many other European languages like the Romance languages and German), to standardize certain things, and there's a bit more flexibility in sentence order than you might otherwise see (partly due to the freedom that same standardization allowed for).

But a lot of the idea that English is a patched-together abomination is because people are taught these "rules" and then learn of all the exceptions. They weren't ever a rule in the first place, so English isn't being inconsistent in breaking them.

English is very much a cross between Germanic and Celtic languages, structurally. It also freely borrows words. It's pretty consistent otherwise.

[Reeve]

It's not really that much of an abomination. English has plenty of rules, too, and for the most part, it discards certain concepts that don't really have much relevance, like the idea of gender for nouns (thinking of many other European languages like the Romance languages and German), to standardize certain things, and there's a bit more flexibility in sentence order than you might otherwise see (partly due to the freedom that same standardization allowed for).

But a lot of the idea that English is a patched-together abomination is because people are taught these "rules" and then learn of all the exceptions. They weren't ever a rule in the first place, so English isn't being inconsistent in breaking them.

English is very much a cross between Germanic and Celtic languages, structurally. It also freely borrows words. It's pretty consistent otherwise.

There's no consistency in English with regards to the sounds letters make. If you read a word in Spanish, you can tell exactly the way it sounds. The same can't be said for English. Also the number of phrasal verbs that completely change their meaning depending on the prepositions they're paired with is a bit absurd.

Cough
Tough
Hiccough
Through
Furlough

As an example. And for phrasal verbs:

Hang
Hang on
Hang out
Hang up
Hang in there

Hold
Hold on
Hold up
Hold out
Hold in confidence
Hold over

etc.

[Funt Case]

slightly off topic is the spellcheck on mmo english-us? I use firefox so it might be that spellcheck. Anyway it's confusing the hell out of me, im not sure if i spell anything right >.>

[Ethes]

Grammar? What is that? I tend to ignore that kind of filth!

Learned Dutch and German grammar in school. Fell asleep during English class as it was booring...
On a bit more serious note: I've most likely learned most of my English outside of class, through reading, online gaming and international friends. That includes grammar, I think

[Deleted]

Aren't singleplayer games and a mountain of books eligible answer?

[anthemm]

School doesn't really teach you how to write well, even if you learn basic grammar and whatnot in class. At school, I never learned the difference between a comma and a semicolon or between who and whom. At school, I only learned the fundamentals, the bare minimum needed to spell and communicate; but never how to write well, or how to articulate myself properly. It's very easy to write whatever first comes to mind without much introspection or critical thought; I think many people write like that. Learning how to write well requires that you learn how to think clearly and concisely. School simply teaches you how to behave and think like an automaton, not like a creative, intelligent individual.

[Endus]

There's no consistency in English with regards to the sounds letters make. If you read a word in Spanish, you can tell exactly the way it sounds. The same can't be said for English.

That's because English borrows words from other languages.

And you're overplaying that point, anyway; there's a lot of small rules on pronunciation, but they're not inconsistent. The issue is that there are a lot of qualifiers; you can't say "'ei' is pronounced like a long 'a' as in 'weigh'", since the pronunciation rules are much more complex than that; it relies on where in the word it is placed, what letters come before and after, etc.

Some people point to things like "if you take the -gh from 'enough', the 'o' from 'women', and the 'ti' from 'nation', you can spell 'fish' as 'ghoti'; isn't English silly and inconsistent?" That is just an example of a poor and incomplete understanding of English, though; the -gh only provides an "f" sound in certain positions, and the same is true of "ti" providing a "sh" sound. They can't provide those sounds in the word 'ghoti', which has to be pronounced 'goaty' in English.

Because there ARE rules, they're just more complicated than languages with simple phonetic spellings.

And again; a large part of this comes from the Celtic and Teutonic languages the Anglo-Saxon merged with over a thousand years ago. There's sounds in most Gaelic that simply don't exist in English; there's three gutturals, for instance, in Scottish Gaelic, which don't exist as sounds in English, and there's a host of dipthongs that don't carry over properly, so they use variations like "mh" which sounds kind of like a 'v' but not quite (if you know Gaelic, you can pick out the difference, someone who speaks only English probably couldn't) (And yes, I speak a little Gaelic).

It's not "an abomination", it's just based on linguistics that have very little to do with Latin-based Romance languages, and only partially to do with Germanic languages. English has more in common with Swedish and Gaelic than it does with German.

[Deleted]

English is the perfect language for someone to just know by instinct, without knowing any of the rules. That's how for example I personally roll.

To me, a sentence either looks right, or it looks wrong. I couldn't for the life of me tell you the science behind why something is correct and why it isn't. It's just a feeling.

[Funt Case]

It's not "an abomination", it's just based on linguistics that have very little to do with Latin-based Romance languages, and only partially to do with Germanic languages. English has more in common with Swedish and Gaelic than it does with German.

I wondered why, when i lived in Sweden and went to SFI to learn Swedish it came naturally

[Martinussen]

Started learning english in third grade. Had a bloody good teacher and quickly learned a ton of english. Then in 4th grade we had a bloody dumb-as-shit teacher whom learned us NOTHING AT ALL throughout the whole year. Then we had some decent teachers after that but no one that really did a whole lot..... Honestly, i never had to study english as i were always ahead with no problems cause of tme spent online. Whenever i were required to, i'd easily make 600 word essays in an hour or two with barely any grammatical mistakes.

[Tzalix]

Mainly from video games, TV, and the internet. I learned very little from school, really.

To me, a sentence either looks right, or it looks wrong. I couldn't for the life of me tell you the science behind why something is correct and why it isn't. It's just a feeling.

This. I look at a sentence, I hear it aloud inside my head, and it will either sound right or very, very wrong.

[Martinussen]

Mainly from video games, TV, and the internet. I learned very little from school, really.



This. I look at a sentence, I hear it aloud inside my head, and it will either sound right or very, very wrong.

Also this. Never fucking learned how to fucking find a noun or verb.....

[Fahrenheit]

School... No such thing as the internet (at least not as we know it today) when I was a kid in the 1980s

[kaze950]

A combination of school and self-taught, since some of the supposed "grammar rules" they teach you at school aren't really true, or at least, there's really no basis for the rules other than misconceptions (i.e., you can't end a sentence with a preposition or begin one with "and, but, etc.")

[Anakso]

Mostly at school but I'm sure there are a couple of things I've picked up from online too.