I live only in the present.
This isn’t a philosophical choice. It has nothing to do with my emotional well-being or with a conscious decision to ”live in the moment”.
It’s just that I don’t know how to conjugate verbs in the past or the future yet.
I’m learning Spanish for one reason: because I want to be able to have conversations with native speakers. Because of this, my main form of Spanish study consists of – wait for it – having actual conversations.
When I first started learning Spanish almost three months ago, I didn’t have any need for a textbook or a grammar workbook. I couldn’t understand why people were so hung up on working their way through a step-by-step language program. I only wanted to speak! I didn’t care about grammar, right?
Except . . .
It turns out that once you get past the general introductions and the ”all about me” stuff, conversations are really, really difficult if you only know present tense verbs!
For me – and I would venture to say for most language students whose long-term goal is to be able to speak – grammar shouldn’t be a goal in and of itself. Working your way through a grammar book will not teach you to communicate in Spanish. But that doesn’t mean that explicit grammar study doesn’t have value!
Grammar is one of many tools that I need in order to do what really matters to me: talk to people. I’m not anti-grammar, whether I’m learning languages or teaching them.
I just feel that communicating should come first and drive the need for grammar, rather than the other way around.
If you’re learning to play the guitar because you want to be able to strum some songs while sitting around a campfire, then you probably won’t start by studying sheet music and practicing scales for an hour every day. And if you’re learning a language because you want to have natural conversations with native speakers, you probably won’t gain much by conjugating verbs for an hour and a half every day.
The most important approach that I use to learn Spanish grammar is the most important approach that I use to learn Spanish in general: Skype conversations with native speakers. My conversation partners and tutors correct me and gently guide me to use the correct verb tense when the one that I’m using leads to a breakdown in communication.
Another way that I’m learning Spanish grammar is through reading. I read a children’s novel for about 20 minutes every night. I finished Charlie and the Chocolate Factory a few weeks ago, and am now halfway through A Tale of Despereaux. After reading ”fue” a dozen times, I’m starting to use it in spoken Spanish without even noticing.
When I taught children, the effect of reading on grammar was both obvious and enormous: children who read a lot had better grammar than children who didn’t. Now that I’m an adult reading in a second language, I’m seeing how that works from a learner’s perspective. I don’t have to ”study” the common verbs that I read in novels – I just see them again and again until they become second nature.
I’m also doing some explicit grammar study. I purchased two books: Practice Makes Perfect Spanish Verb Tenses and Practice Makes Perfect Spanish Pronouns and Prepositions. I spend about 20 minutes every day or two on grammar study, alternating between the two books. This is by no means the most important part of my Spanish study – but it is an important tool.