G'day mate, how's it going? Today, I'm gonna be touching on a little bit provocative thought with regard to English learning. Do we really need to learn English grammar in Japanese from scratch? In my book, I don't think so. Why? Let's get underway.
First and foremost, the overwhelming majority of Japanese who are learning English tend to start learning English grammar first. And then, vocabulary and a little bit listening and pronunciation. This order isn't actually right. Why? From a linguistic perspective, pronunciation has to be the first to learn, because if you don't know how English should be sounded, then why on earth could we possibly learn English grammar in a correct way? Such learners don't know how to read any grammatical sentence aloud with the correct pronunciation. They probably try to defend their ways like we can learn grammar by just memorising the concept of each grammar rule, and how to memorise them? Well, you just try to memorise the things how they should be spelt, not sounded. Yes, true, and you possibly could. But nevertheless, even if you could memorise all of the grammar rules, the practicality of English skills you have acquired won't give you any guarantee.
And, then, Japanese and English are completely different languages in terms of the character, grammar rules and pronunciation. Yes, of course, it is understandable that you need to learn basic vocabulary in Japanese if you don't have any entry in your head. Nonetheless, learning and mastering pronunciation needs to be prioritised. As for the character, yes you need to learn etymology such as prefix, suffix and word roots. I don't think you need Japanese to learn them. When it comes to grammar rules, if you can pronounce all 44 sounds of English phonemic symbols accurately, then I don't think you need Japanese to learn, simply because you can definitely differentiate the way of saying words in English from that in Japanese English. It's gonna be pretty hard for learners to stick to learning grammar in Japanese, which is apparently impeded by the Katakana-clad English pronunciation. Before it's too late to refine pronunciation thoroughly, let's try to stop using Japanese for learning grammar. There is a way in which you learn English grammar in Japanese, in which case you can think of grammar rules in Japanese, not learning grammar rules themselves in Japanese. What do I mean by this? Well, you use English-written grammar book, and think about rules in your first language, which is perfectly fine. Everyone does in non-English speaking countries. But it's gonna take a heavy toll on your English pronunciation if you learn English grammar by your first language-written book due to the lack of practising correct pronunciation.
To wrap it up, technically speaking you don't need Japanese for learning English grammar at all. I mean, what I'm saying is that a Japanese-written grammar book or something isn't needed. You can think about English grammar in your first language. This is normal for everyone learning English across the planet. The problem is that Japanese considerably differs from English in the first place. So, I reckon this is rather our advantage, because we can learn English from pronunciation from scratch. This is the correct order to learn English if you want to streamline the process of acquiring more practical English communication skills.
Thanks for flicking through my blog. Have a good one mate.