Strategies for Enhancing Spanish Grammar
Why is Spanish grammar important to me?
It helps me better understand what I hear or read, and communicate my ideas more accurately and confidently when I speak or write
Why would I want to know about strategies to help me learn and use Spanish?
If there are grammar forms you just can’t seem to get right, this webpage may be just what you are looking for: it has suggestions for strategies for learning, performing, and monitoring Spanish grammar. (read more)
What are grammar strategies and how can they help me?
Grammar strategies are thoughts and actions that are primarily aimed at improving my grammatical accuracy. They can help me …
- learn and use problematic grammar forms, and
- improve my overall knowledge of Spanish and accuracy when I draw on this knowledge.
Examples of strategies include making note cards, reciting chants, singing little songs, and creating acronyms to remember when to use a particular tense.
Hum… Still not clear? Click here to see a specific example of a strategy
The likelihood is that at least semi-consciously you are already using numerous strategies in order to deal with Spanish grammar. Answer these questions to get a better idea of what and how you use strategies.
I wonder about the strategies that others use and whether they might work for me too.
This webpage features strategies shared by actual Spanish students and nonnative instructors who have had success at dealing with Spanish grammar thanks in part to these strategies. The webpage is intended to:
- enhance my ability to learn and use grammar, and
- to do so without having to seek the assistance of a teacher or a textbook.
However, there are no guarantees that any one of these strategies will work for me in the same was as it did for the person who described the strategy on the webpage. It will depend on a
variety of things
How do I use this grammar strategies webpage?
The webpage table of contents is to the left. If I need strategies for specific grammar forms, then I click on "I’m looking for a strategy that someone has used successfully to learn a specific grammar form." If I need to find other helpful strategies, I click on "I’m looking for strategies that match my learning style and that can apply to various grammar forms."
The grammar terminology used throughout the webpage is meant to reflect that used in the common textbooks. Note that we have linked the most salient grammatical terms to their definitions in the Glossary. There is also a link to the Glossary to the left.
Keep in mind that this webpage focuses on strategizing about the learning and use of Spanish grammar. For those who wish, there are links to Spanish grammar sites (find the link in the table of contents).
If you happen to have a great strategy for a grammar form you don’t see here and you would like to share it with thousands of other Spanish learners, we would be glad to hear from you! Also, should you have questions or encounter any technical difficulties as you move through the webpage, you may always contact us here.
Federal funding from the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA) and from a College of Liberal Arts Technology Grant at the University of Minnesota provided the necessary resources for the development of this web site.
