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I'm more or less capable of explaining my thoughts in English and I've recently started learning Spanish. Of course, there's a bunch of various articles/videos/posts on how to do it.

But one thing I truly can't understand. I used to read a lot of comments/opinions/reviews, not only related to Spanish, when a person allegedly managed to learn the language almost without studying grammar.

One of the quotes is:

I learned it without doing any lessons: I tried to read articles and books and listen to podcasts, look up words, and maybe occasionally looked up grammar but didn't worry about it too much. I passed the C1 without taking any classes.

And I can find a lot of things like this.

And I simply can't get how. When I tried to start any language through articles or anything similar, I ended up sleeping with the dictionary and hating the process on the day 2.

When I started trying to find people to talk to in Spanish, I felt a complete lack of means to express my thoughts.

When I tried to read what people messaged me, I could never get the exact meaning of the phrase without double checking in an online translator or dictionary.

I can't understand how people proceed to speaking because when I want to say something, I want to know what I'm saying, I want to understand the mechanics of the language, how it works, why I should put this word here but no there and so on and so forth.

Summing up, I would really love to read your opinions on that. Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe I'm just doing it wrongfully. Just wonder how people manage to get used to the language without studying grammar which is, as I think, exactly something that tells you how the language functions (though I don't say one should only stick to the grammar books and not use anything else, no way).

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One of the core approaches to learning a language without studying grammar is extensive reading. The key to extensive reading is that the material should be easy enough that you don't need to check the dictionary to understand what you're reading.

In early stages, this means media aimed at either toddlers, beginning readers or beginning language learners.

For example, if you were to watch Teletubbies in Spanish, I bet you could follow most of what was happening without looking anything up, because that show is designed so a 1 year old can follow the narrative and catch a few words.

In Japanese, they call this approach Tadoku, and have the following rules:

Start from scratch.

Choose easy books you can enjoy without translating. Look at the pictures carefully. They will help your understanding and make you want to read more.

Don’t use a dictionary.

Looking up unknown words in a dictionary slows you down and kill the joy of reading. Rather, let the pictures tell the story and keep on reading.

Skip over difficult words, phrases and passages.

If the pictures don’t help, don’t hesitate to skip over difficult parts and keep on reading. If you enjoy the overall story, you don’t have to understand every minor detail!

When the going gets tough, quit the book and pick up another.

The going gets tough when the book is not suitable for your level or your interest. Simply throw the book away and start reading something else.

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Personal preference

Some people enjoy learning grammar and figuring it out. Others do not. This might explain some of your bafflement.

I would not use dictionaries too much

I would recommend reading and listening to stuff without a dictionary. Reading is probably easier to start with. You'll pick up the rough meanings of the words without a reference. Maybe, if some particular word occurs again and again, and keeps irritating you, check that.

Speaking?

I can't claim that this approach work for listening and speaking, as I have had some formal schooling in all the languages I can communicate verbally in. Hopefully someone else answers with relevant experience or references.

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  • Thank you very much for your message! "I would not use dictionaries too much" - okay, let's suppose so. What would you start reading from? Let's assume I'm learning... Spanish. I open a website of a popular newspaper, pick up an article that's nice to me visually. I start reading... and obviously understand nothing. How am I supposed to understand the meanings? Or when will I start getting more or less correct meanings of the words? Don't get me wrong, I'm not against your approach and I'm not asking for an instruction, I'm just trying to discuss it, I'm really curious Commented Apr 15, 2021 at 23:07
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    Start with children's books or books you already have read and know well in English. To get started you might also use some other tools like Ankidroid or Clozemaster or whatever. You don't need presice understanding, but you do want to figure out the rough meaning of the text. Commented Apr 16, 2021 at 10:16
  • You can't always read a language just like that. I doubt I could learn German by "reading it'. Or Finnish or Icelandic. Commented Jan 30 at 16:47
  • @Lambie Yeah, some level of shared vocabulary helps. I understand some German (and Dutch, Afrikaans) without having studied them based on English and Nordic languages, and have read stuff in Spanish and Portuguese without having studied them, but with a little bit of French. Obviously does not work with Chinese. Commented Jan 31 at 18:09
  • @Tommi You can't read until you know how to say/pronounce words in the language...to learn a language, you have to learn patterns and those patterns need to be heard, first of all. Commented Jan 31 at 18:10
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To learn a language, you have to learn basic patterns.

There are patterened exercises for this.

For example, this is a good place to start:

  • I love/like dogs.
  • I love/like cats.
  • I don't like dogs.
  • I don't like cats.

verb patterns

This is just a simple example. But without learning patterns, you can't learn to speak a language.

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For me, the intuitive way has always worked better than the structured way (dictionaries, grammar books).

IMHO, our brain is very good in detecting and memorizing associations. So, find texts, videos, audios that you can correlate, where you know the content.

E.g. I found the first Harry Potter books in Spanish translation to be quite easily readable. When learning Polish, I was lucky to find dubbed version of my favorite Star Trek Voyager show being aired via satellite.

A few times, a structured analysis helped me, but the majority of language skill I acquired through "assimilation". Anyway, you have to get beyond the grammar rules at some point, or you won't be able to understand and talk with acceptable speed.

And especially, get your native language out of the way. If you translate back and forth, that'll not only be too slow for an effective communication, but will also result in clumsy sentences not sounding natural.

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