Grammar or not to grammar, that’s a question…

Since English is my second language, I remember from the very beginning of my learning process, grammar played a very important role. Grammar is just like the fundamental concrete structure of the English learning “House”, with vocabulary being the bricks and tiles of the walls and roofs of this house.

Teachers taught specific sentence patterns based on grammatical rules, and we then make our own sentences. Once we were required to translate a sentence, the first thing that guided us was the grammar rules. Subject first, then think about the verbs, and then the objects. However, it’s very difficult for us, since it seems that each grammatical rule has exceptions. When it came to this occasions like irregular verbs, teachers would say, “it’s just the way it is, you just need to memorize all those”. Sometimes we were really confused, and then Chinglish was created by ourselves. Mistakes like “--Do you like mango? – Yes, I like.” and “--Haven’t you been to Beijing? –Yes, I haven’t gone there.” are commonplace, not to mention the errors like “I goed to the park yesterday” and “My mother is a teacher, and he is very kind to his students.” (In Chinese, he and she are both pronounced as “TA”, though characters are totally different.).

On the other hand, sometimes, grammar did help us, because for us, English language learners, it is something that we could use to check whether we are using Standard English correctly. It is something that may help us from making horrible mistakes thus embarrassing ourselves.

As for writing, I think grammar benefit us even more. A lot of Chinese students could write beautiful sentences with very little grammatical errors, because our teachers put much emphasis on grammar and the students have very good knowledge of it; and because in writing, students could have more time to think about grammar, and they could see what they are “thinking” and “talking” in their mind, compared with speaking English.

Frankly speaking, for me, if I knew nothing about grammar at the very beginning, and when I was still in China, which means I didn’t have very good language environment, I would have no clue to learn English, possibly I would have to memorize everything, every word that I see and hear. Wouldn’t that be an even more difficult thing?