Many students panic at the thought of opening a grammar book and learning about verb conjugations. It's really not that hard, especially if you manage to make it meaningful and take the attitude of wanting to communicate instead of "memorizing verb forms." Follow these steps, use our recommended resource and play!
When you speak your native language, I bet you hardly ever think about grammar. You speak because you want to communicate. I'm also pretty sure that you never memorized a dictionary or a grammar book!
That's the point you want to reach in your new language--to not even have to think about grammar, but to have word order, conjugations, endings, etc., come to your mind intuitively when you need them.
I know many language students who faithfully memorized "tables" of all kinds: declensions (in German, Russian, etc.), conjugations (most European languages), and grammar rules.
The assumption that you'll be able to scan these tables fast enough to come up with the correct ending or the correct verb form when you're trying to say something is ambitious...but unreasonable. It doesn't work. Our internal processor just isn't fast enough, and it's not its role in the first place.
The better way to study grammar is to go after a question that puzzles you. In a text that you understand, pick one word and start digging. Let's take an example from our SpeakEZ German course (this approach does work for all languages with conjugations):
ENGLISH: Did I get your name right?
GERMAN: Habe ich Ihren Namen richtig verstanden?
DECODED: Have i Your Name right understood?
Just the decoding gives you a wonderful clue as to how the sentence is put together. You can immediately see the difference in word order and tense.
Let's say you want to investigate the word, "verstanden."
1. If you use the decoded text, you already know what it means ("understood" is right underneath "verstanden"). Let's assume you didn't know that, but you have a hunch that it might be a verb.
Go to Verbix . Verbix is a fantastic tool when it comes to figuring out verb forms. You'll see why in a minute. Verbix supports a number of languages--check the bottom of the home page to see if the language you're learning is one of them.
On the left hand side, there is a link to "Is it a verb?" in the on-line services box. Go there and put in "verstanden."
2. It tells you that it's a verb, and an inflection of "verstehen." If you click on "verstanden," it will give you the whole table for the verb - all the verb forms! You'll find that "habe" (the first word in the sentence) actually is part of the verb and that "habe verstanden" is in the present perfect tense.
This is where I lose most students. Present perfect tense? Grammar is a language of its own that many people are not fluent in.
Is it really necessary to know what each tense is called? I have to say that it makes communication about grammar a whole lot easier in a classroom when everybody knows their grammar terminology! However, if all you want is to understand the language and have access to decoded texts to study--you do have a choice.
3. If you want to know more about the present perfect in German, now is the time to find that section in your grammar book. Using it as a resource instead of memorizing it will actually help you retain the information you're after.
Figure out how to form present perfect tenses for different kinds of German verbs and play around with them.
4. WAIT! You're not done! Unless you practice using these forms in a context that's relevant to your life, you've just wasted your time.
5. Take your original sentence and make variations
- Change the subject (WHO understood: you, she, etc.)
Hast du den Namen richtig verstanden?
Haben Sie den Namen richtig verstanden?
Hat sie den Namen richtig verstanden?
- Change the verb (try forget, pronounce, say, etc., anything that makes sense.)
forget: Habe ich den Namen vergessen?
pronounce: Habe ich Ihren Namen richtig ausgesprochen?
say: Habe ich Ihren Namen richtig gesagt?
Say all of these variations out loud, several times in a row. At all times, be certain to know what you're saying. It's easy to get caught up in repeating verb forms like a parrot just to get through them.
Instead, picture what you're saying. Imagine you're talking to someone and you're really asking that question. Act it out and do whatever you need to do to make it take on life!
