A comprehensive guide to structured study of Spanish grammar
Whether you’re studying Spanish for school, travel, or personal growth, understanding its grammar is essential.
Although studying grammar is not always people’s favourite topic when starting to learn a language,
we all know that sooner or later we will have to spend some time digging into the rules and exceptions of verb conjugation, orthography and more… While immersing yourself into the language by listening and speaking some words before studying grammar might be a great idea, as a first approach, not soon after you will realize that some basic concepts are required, specially if you want to improve faster in the speaking field (for example knowing which verb work better in a certain situation).
In this post, I would like to share some recommendations for a more accesible and enjoyable grasp of the Spanish grammar. Here are our 5 tips:
1. Set up a reasonable time during your schedule to study only grammar. It can be as many hours as you want, but try to be consistent. It is better to just start with one hour a week and actually get that done than to feel guilty for not completing the planned session. By achieving such small step, the goal of learning a whole block of grammar won’t look so dull next time.
2. Plan your grammar session to study before doing something fun. If I’m meeting some friends in the evening or I have tickets to watch a movie, it won’t feel so tedious to dedicate some of my free time before that activity into learning the grammar. It is kind of a reward that we give ourselves and motivate us to study even on a Saturday afternoon.
3. Grammar Focused Learning. It sounds repetitive, but it is important to put remark in this one: understanding Spanish grammar is crucial. Although there are a lot of languages with a more complex grammar content than Spanish (such as German or Polish), we still have a lot of rules in spelling and different ways to conjugate irregular verbs, plus some tense forms are not even translated into other languages (you will learn this with the Subjunctive mode). For this reason, learning Spanish grammar might feel overwhelming; so the next tip would be to focus on one grammar rule at a time and practice using it in different contexts. If I’m studying the past simple, I’m going to try get this one perfect while focusing on how to use it during my speaking practice (even if that means leaving other concepts on a side until you feel confident with the specific verb form you are using).
4. Flash card game. This would basically be to give it another use to this activity that helps so much in learning vocabulary. Write down a keyword in one side to remind you of the rule or the verb to conjugate and try to do without looking the back of the card. Copying the information in the first place will benefit you in order to get the grammar knowledge easier.
5. Focus on the most important topics about Spanish grammar to start with. Concepts like the difference between ser and estar, irregular verbs such as ir/decir/andar, and reflexive verbs, are a key to expand the grammar base and make it easier when practicing these words in a conversation.
Hope you find this post useful and can put on practice some of the points in your next studying session.
Check our Grammar section for a first approach into the Spanish language.