Quintus wrote:The only living language I studied at school was French. The language learning in all the schools that I attended, both for French and dead languages, was always exclusively based on grammar during the first two years and on grammar plus syntax for the next ones. The same method was also used for the Italian language itself: we were given a very great deal of grammar and syntax notions. For French, we were taught the pronunciation of words we were using daily while studying the grammar, so our language comprehension kept up with theoretical learning and was progressive. Things haven't happened to me this way with English. My situation evolved, and at times regressed, with various vicissitudes. But, given the type of education I was given at school for years, at the time when I decided to study English the first thing I did was to desperately seek out a good grammar book. Without a grammar book, I am dead. Besides, it's not easy for me to find a good grammar book. To me, the ideal grammar book is one written in a way that I want it to be written, that is, in the same way as my grammar books were written. This is just what occurred to me the other day while attempting an approach to modern Greek, although I did it mostly for curiosity and mainly to refresh a bit of the ancient one. I couldn't find anything I liked. Moreover, the effective information from the net is zilch. I'm afraid though that my search for the ideal one will last a long time, sooo long.
Oh, I remember how Latin was taught in high school. Yeah, I rember it with truly deep disgust. The teachers were not really responsible for it being disgusting. It was the ministerial program that mandated that worthless grammar based torture I was subjected to.
I am glad the teacher I had in the last year of high school for rebelling to this insanity and teaching us scientific Latin literature instead of those useless translations.

I have always promised myself to take a Latin book one of these days and to study it in all its glory, caring for vowel length and stress instead than for future imperatives.
I think anyway that a grammar approach to languages with a relatively reduced morphology, like English or also Italian or German, might be feasible, although still counterproductive at times. But what about languages like Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Slavic languages or Arabic? I think that, with those, focusing too much on grammar, in particular on morphology, at a too early stage would probably end up preventing you from learning the language, leaving you to stick with little more than a reading knowledge.
Now, if the language is dead, one can live up with it, although, If I studied them, I could not stand not being able to express myself and make sentences freely in those beautiful tongues of the olden days.
Reading my messages someone could think that I do not like grammar. On the contrary I love grammar and I find it the most interesting aspects of language learning. I like also to practise it with exercises, even those repetitive exercises people usually hate as "here are thirty nouns: write down their full declension for all numbers and cases".
What I question, instead, is the time in which some superfluous grammar notions are introduced in courses and handbooks, while other important ones are not given the attention they should deserve.
Then details can be taken into account at a later stage, possibly directly in the language one is studying.
Think for example to the other topic when you asked me about the conjugation of the verb to be in Russian. I could have told you that in that language if the copula is expressed the adjective introduced by it can have a short or a long form, and if you use the long form, this one is usually in the instrumental case instead of in the nominative (as in Latin for example). And that on top of that with the past tense you can use colloquially also nominative while with future you can use only instrumental. Would these unnecessary details have been helpful to you? I think not.
http://japaneseruleof7.com/why-are-japa ... 5-reasons/
Here is a nice article written by an English teacher who lives in Japan, whose way to tell stories and his general
topaiolo tone I find quite funny and enjoyable.
In his article he both praises and critics English teaching in Japan, which is very deep and thorough concerning English grammar, but lacks completely any approach to the language as it is used.
Result? Few Japanese can speak English to a level proportionate to the time and effort they devoted to its study.
Ron Weasley wrote:
I don't like to read mangas, because I have never read, I don't know their write mode. Is much better watching animes ^^.
Honestly I have read only a handful of them in my life. However I like some of them, especially those some classical animes are based upon. I think comic books are a good resource to learn a language, because with them you can often get the gist of sentences from pictures and context.
For the rest, there are several nice resources, as the blog I linked above, that can couple both your interest for Japan and its beautiful language with English practice. Another good resource is
NHK world. It is Japan's international news channel in English. In addition to news they also broadcast many intersting documentaries on Japanese language, Japan's history, its culture and science in general. Tell me if you like it.
