Studying your native language | General discussion | Forum

I haven't really tried this, but I find it a very interesting idea.

I'm not sure if this is exactly the sort of thing you're talking about, but I have found that a better understanding of English grammar (beyond what I learned in school) is helpful when learning (in my case) French.  What's a past participle?  What's a present participle?  What's an infinitive?  None of those are terms I learned in school.  (US schools and, I hear, UK schools, have dramatically reduced the amount of detailed English grammar they teach.)  I have a very good command of English and have degrees from two top schools, but my skills are just from reading… I know what "feels" right.  In most cases I can't explain WHY it's right.  This is a barrier for me when my French materials explain grammar rules in terms with which I am not terribly familiar.  And obviously when I am pretty new to a second language, I have no clue what "feels" right.

One of the books I am using, Intermediate French for Dummies, goes over English grammar, parts of speech, etc., before launching into French grammar.  That's very helpful.  Something broken down even further, as it might be for ESL learners, might be more helpful.

**EDIT**  I just looked up "staircase intonation," because I had never heard this term.  Here's what I find so interesting… one of the big complaints about French is that the words all run together.  This makes it hard to understand spoken French, especially early on.  I hadn't thought about the fact that is also true of English.  I think of us as pronouncing each individual word.  But I suppose it could be just as hard for non-native speakers to parse out the individual words from the "sound units" we speak.  (Of course, in French, the ends of words are routinely not pronounced, and this adds to the difficulty, although if you know that the end of a word won't be pronounced, then the words running together should be no different from the "harder" English sounds running together.)