The Importance of Learning Grammar

The Importance of Learning Grammar

Lecturer (Linguistics / English linguistics)
OHTAKA Akane

Many readers may have thoughts such as, “You will be able to speak a foreign language if you simply memorize a set of sentences” or “You don’t need to learn grammar to speak a foreign language.” But is that really true?

In every language, a single linguistic expression can have two or more interpretations. For example, if someone says, “John met young men and women,” you will notice that the sentence has two possible readings: one where “young” modifies both men and women, and another where “young” modifies only men, but not women.

If you want to make the sentence unambiguous and convey only one meaning, you might instead say, “John met young men and young women” or “John met young men and also women.” What you are doing here is controlling the linguistic expressions you use.

But how can you do this when learning a foreign language? The answer is simple: you can do this by learning the grammar of the language!

Be open to experiencing how intriguing and risky language can be — and how important learning grammar truly is.

▲Thesis supervision

▲Conference visit to Philadelphia