I watched this interview with D’aria talking about how she learned French and it struck me that we both started the same way.

Many people on YouTube and other articles online advise NEVER to start with grammar. However this is wrong.

I started like her. I bought the Practice Makes Perfect books and methodically over a period of time, every day (I still do them), completed the exercises and activities in the book by hand writing all of them out in notebooks. Grammar was like a puzzle to me. It provided the education and interest but it was also teaching me vocabulary and sentence structure. It’s what made my level increase quite quickly (until I realised I needed practice to speak it too! 🤣).

Overall, lots of people online tell you a lot of things about how and why to learn and in what way. However they’re focusing on their own ideas and suggestions.

I’d say, whatever you choose make sure that there’s a blend of grammar, pronunciation exercises, speaking and writing then use feedback, repetition, practice and application with each of them. It’s these latter aspects that will support your la gauge growth – and then make the new language part of your every day for the rest of your life.

Make the language part of you.

Here’s how I used those grammar books as I did a video on that.