Grammar, do you ever just know it?

Grammar in the Chinese language

The grammar of a language is the base of everything that's why in most classes there is such an emphasis on it, but as you keep improving in your language journey you'll keep learning new structures and old structures will become more complex, but when you are on the breach between beginner and intermediate level things get a bit complex, because you have more and more structures but at the same time you still don't know the basic grammar, by this I mean that you still need to look them up or analyze them when you are creating a sentence.

The key to just knowing these structures is to practice and to get immersed in the language, because the more you interact with the structures, the faster you will process them, and suddenly they will start to click. 

How can you use writing to improve this 

There are different ways to do this; some people like to create paragraphs to practice, or in my case I like describing pictures, by this I mean that I choose a picture, and then I create a story that makes sense with the image and write a text. 

Another popular way to do this is to write a journal in Chinese. I have seen a lot of different studygrams recommending this, and I think it can be quite helpful because by writing every day you'll use the grammar constantly, and you can learn new vocabulary. It's important to remember that if you want to do this, don't put too much pressure on yourself, you don't need to write a whole page every day, just write whatever you want, some days it can only be what you ate or a funny story, the important thing is that you are constant with it.

The way to improve your grammar by using your speaking and listening skills 

As I mentioned previously, you can do this through different methods and when it comes to speaking you might feel a bit shy, but you can do this alone; if you are just like me, and you are yet to find a language partner you can try to create conversations by yourself, you can do it in your mind or actually saying out loud, whatever way you prefer, but the point of this is to practice. The way to do it is just by giving yourself a situation and then try to think about what would you answer in that case. I like to these before I fall asleep.

Now for listening it is quite simple, listen to a podcast and just slightly analyze it; this is mainly used to remember structures that you already know. When you understand a sentence just think a bit of what's behind it, for example if you listen to: 雖然我很忙，但是我喜歡我的工作,  you know the meaning but when you analyze it you'll remember that when we use 雖然 we need to use 但是/可是 so that its used correctly, if you are constantly doing this you'll easily know what to do when you are creating your own sentences.

Finally, it's important to constantly be in contact with the Chinese language because some things are just about repetition and to constantly be immersed in the language, if you want to learn more about how to adapt your brain to the Chinese language you can watch the following video: Change your brain to Chinese