I couldn’t help myself thinking: “should I learn some grammar?” when I was following “mangolanguages” lessons last year. I actually went to bookstores a few times looking for Spanish grammar books. To my surprise, most of the books are titled “Spanish Verbs”. I was asking myself: “why verbs?”. I know many of you who are reading this would laugh. But it was exactly how I felt. But since I was quite happy with my progress with “mangolanguages”, I didn’t buy the books. To tell you the truth, I could barely finish the first page of the book anyway because my vocabulary or the lack of it.

When I reached about lesson 30, I started to get confused with a lot of things. For example, most of Spanish sentence started without I, you, we or they. Why? I started to ask those questions. Also some nouns start with “el” while others start with “la”.

One day I came across a book in a library titled “Teach Yourself Spanish starter kit” by “Elisabeth Smith”. It came with a CD, so I converted it into MP3s and transferred them to my mobile phone. I listen to them whenever I was on a bus. It speaks much slower than “mangolanguages” and a lot easier to follow probably because I’ve already learned “a lot” by dong “mangolanguages” lessons.

At about second week of the book, it started to explain the difference of tengo, tiene and tenemos. Suddenly I felt all the confusion I had with my online lessons makes so much sense. Verbs are the backbone of Spanish sentence. I then started to go back to the early lessons of “mangolanguages” and matched up all the verbs I’ve learned. All the confusion started disappearing. I felt so confident.

When I started studying English, I was taught grammar almost from day one and I couldn’t speak English confidently after 10 years learning it. To learn a second language, you have to learn like a child learning his/her mother tongue.

For me, I definitely go with “no grammar” approach at the beginning. At later stage, you may find grammar necessary to help you understand what you are learning. But keep it to minimum.