Question:
seek for you opinions about that "is grammar important for english
learner with english as second language?"
English is my second language, but I find grammar can't improve my
english much. Some people said reading more, listening more and
practising more is better than learning more grammar. To me learning
grammar is boring. I really get confused. Should give up grammar and
read more story books instead?
Answer:
If you learn grammar as a series of hundreds of confusing rules that
must be memorized for regurgitation on a test, grammar is of absolutely
no use for the production of English orally or in writing. You know
that, I'm sure, because of the English education you and probably
almost everyone in your country received.
What is important for EFL students is to learn the grammar they need as
they study the language, not to absorb the entire grammatical structure
first and then attempting to learn how to use the language.
Reading and listening will help you a great deal more than studying
boring grammar books under certain conditions.
1. The English you listen to and read must be interesting to you.
2. It must be high-level native-speaker-quality English.
3. You must not only be able to understand the content, but also
learn how to use the language based on how the language is learned in
what you read and hear. In other words, you must imitate the English
you read and hear.
Not everyone learns language in exactly the same way, though, so there
is no one way that will guarantee that you will learn the language as
well as you would like. It takes daily practice, which means that it
takes a commitment to learning the language well.
A conscious knowledge of the grammar of English will not necessarily
help your English production, but that is not to say that knowing
English grammar is not important. It seems to me far better to learn
how the language is actually used and then to learn why it is used that
way.
I've been teaching EFL in Japan and Taiwan for the past 20 years, so I
understand your question and your dilemma.
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