How do you use Grammar Books?

[Glenn]

You're welcome! I've been thinking about using it for Chinese, but I'm not quite at the composition level yet. I'm still in the input phase.

[putonghua73]

Whenever you read the explanation of some grammatical phenomenon, read it as many times as you need to understand what they're talking about. Also make sure you understand the examples they give and the point they're making with each example. Now when you read something, try to look for that phenomenon in the text, to understand how it occurs in context.

This is how I use grammar books to provide a thorough explanation of grammatical phenomenon when it occurs in my textbook (currently Chinese In Steps Vol 3 - will be switching to another textbook series once I've finished, probably NPCR or BOYA). Through understanding the explanation in tandem with working through the examples and exercises, allows me to consolidate my learning, and as Chrix points out, to understand how it occurs in context (the important point).

Understanding the grammar provides me with the building blocks to consolidate my learning. Another student who studied here [Keats] understood through speaking and listening - she cannot pick up a grammar book and learn. Different strokes and all that.

I bought Basic Chinese and Intermediate Chinese by Yip Po-Chang and Don Rimmington just before I flew out to China. Both books are still in pristine condition because I find the grammatical explanations quite tortuous. I much prefer A Practical Chinese Grammar by Hunh-nin Samuel Cheung in collaboration with Sze-yun liu li-lin shih in terms of coverage, examples, layout and allowing me time to breathe and understand the grammatical occurrence. I don't feel that way with the Yip Po-Chang and Don Rimmington books.

Use Amazon or any other online retailer that allows users to provide reviews, to get a few for a couple of grammar books, then pop into a decent bookstore (SO 20th century!) and flick through those books to get an idea of which ones suit you before purchasing.

Time to make a trip to a book exchange in Kunming.

Cheers!

[querido]

What leosmith said. Ohhh... Yeahhh... Everything he said. Essay writing. Yes.

Meanwhile at my toddler level, my answer to the original poster:

Full-sentence production flashcards (English on the front) force me to construct sentences, and I must know some grammar to do that.

Once I've *memorized* a sentence I can answer the card automatically. That is good, but the moment of enforced conscious exercise of the grammar is lost. So, I think it's a good idea to do sentence production cards from the start, before memorizing a mass of the usual stock sentences. This is parallel I think to the horrifying phonics versus "whole language" question. Thank goodness I was taught via phonics, training me to see natural chunks in words so I could automatically break down new ones; ultimately, I want to craft *new* *correct* Chinese sentences on the fly, right?

Thus, I view the grammar book as a source of graduated-difficulty sentences, with analysis. Any good series of textbooks (not necessarily grammar books) could serve as long as it explains everything well enough, but I can think of a comparative disadvantage. Sentences embedded in a storyline are more likely to be *memorized* prematurely. As pleasant as that might be, I would argue that an opportunity for... something... is lost. You could prove me wrong by writing an essay :-), but I remember how hard my 12th grade composition class was, long after I thought I knew my native language. (Here is where I think I harmonize with leosmith's post.)

Your Beginner/Intermediate Routledge grammars are totally super-duper for this I think. (But the Cheung book is very pleasant, feeling much more like having a teacher walking you through, conversationally.)

p.s. leosmith etc.

What leosmith said about essay writing is huge because of the way Chinese suspends the context over a string of sentences, and of the importance of having fluency with the devices it uses to do so. On many of my production flashcards I've included as necessary the preceding sentences (in English) that provide the context instead of adding parenthetic bits to the sentence itself, or changing it, which I must not be competent to do and which would talk-around this very issue. That is a micro-acknowlegement of its importance. There's a scholarly niche for this exact subject. One source is a book which was Yong Ho's Phd thesis: Aspects of Discourse Structure in Mandarin Chinese. The book is very expensive and very fascinating. A HUGE excerpt is available free. Forgive me I don't remember where, Kindle via Amazon I think. It is said that the importance of his point of view is controversial. Yong Ho's thesis is that there are very broad principles overarching whole discourses/dialogues that explain why Chinese is done the way it is, implying that naturalness in discourse/dialogue requires a mastery of these principles and devices. A shortcoming of (most of) Western scholarship in Chinese, he argues (as of 1993), is that although they explain the devices (like ne) on a dissected (usually sentence-wise) scale, they omit this larger view, which he proceeds to try to give. Of course, it involves phenomena of larger scale than ne. Not knowing the field's verbiage I can barely grasp what he says, but it looks pretty good to me. (Hey you, if Google has turned this post into an ad for the book, don't forget to read the whole thread!)

Answer: One should use a grammar book as an entre to this fascinating stuff!

[buzhongren]

There are lots of PHD thesis about Chinese grammar on the Internet. I prefer the examples in chinese,pinyin,literal,translation sequence. I learn more by looking at the literal meaning than the translation. When you see something that doesnt make sense you know the grammar is important. It still doesnt solve the problem when you run the sentence through Cedict and get various meanings for each character or word which ones do you use to give a meaningful translation. I think speaking in context solves that problem.

xiele,

Jim