Preface

Language learning is not a straight path, where you go through a textbook and you know the language. Rather, we as we go along, we collect different pieces of a puzzle and try to fit them together in a coherent way. You can learn all of the grammar and all of the vocabulary in one go, but it is another matter to take all of those pieces and create meaning out of it. In addition, there are many ways to create meaning, and meaning often or even usually takes place between people rather than one person working alone. So, learning a language is never a perfectly straight path.

This is not to say, however, that it is not worthwhile to focus on different aspects of a language in an organized and systematic way. This is just practical, especially if you are an adult learner. Young learners have more facility for learning language and they are more likely to be able to just ‘pick it up’.

However, there is a caveat to this way of ‘picking up’ a language—to do this, we need massive exposure to ‘comprehensible input’. Believe me, when I lived in Japan, almost nothing was comprehensible at first. So, there is benefit to textbooks or other material that lays things out in a comprehensible way, and as adults or full-time students, we may not have time for this. Thankfully, there are actually ‘shortcuts’ to learning. Making grammar patterns comprehensible and recognizable from the start is efficient. Yes, we still need to learn to make meaning of these pieces of language, but it is a good start.

Then, there is the way that our brain works. Because it basically ‘runs’ on glucose, and glucose as a fuel is burned very quickly, our brains can only focus intensely for about twenty minutes at a time. We can do this several times a day, and we can use this focus to capture new information and make it ‘stick’ in our brains. We can still learn in other ways that do not require as much focus.

However, we have limited capacity, and most of us have limited time. In addition, while it boosts our learning capacity if we are very interested in learning a language, and especially if it is a language that we like or have an interest in, for many people, learning a language has a more pragmatic motivation. For some people, and especially adults, it requires focus and will power. This textbook has tips on learning, based on neuroscience and developmental theory that can help us to make learning more efficient.
In addition, no matter how much exposure you get to some patterns, without explanation they are so nuanced or complicated that trying to learn them through massive exposure would just take too long and the learner may still not figure them out. This textbook tries to explain grammar concepts is an accessible way, explaining the abstract concepts of them, but showing how this plays out in real life.

This author devoted one and a half years to studying Japanese in Japan. In our classes, we probably spent too much time on grammar, and not enough time actually using the language. So, at the end of this time, Japanese in real life was till mostly incomprehensible. Still, through more diluted exposure to Japanese after this, I started to recognize the grammar features that were being used. As I pick up more vocabulary, I am able to make more and more sense of what people are saying. Studying grammar did help. It is the one feature of language that is very pattern-based, so it is efficient to devote time to it, even though it may not be in a real-life context. This book, however, does try to put grammar into a context that makes sense.

Chances are that the user of this textbook will have studied grammar before but just needs review. In addition, learning a new language takes a long time, and after some time, most of us need to review things we have learning before. Again, language learning is not a straight path. It is the hope of this author that this textbook helps you to get closer to using English to further your goals and interests, whatever they are.