As I learn a multitude of new words, I am realizing that I lack grammar. In my former class, we went over much of the grammar and I found it to be Easy. However, with a lack of practice and a lack of review: I am forgetting basic rules.

Can any one of you amiably suggest a good website, or book, that offers good grammar lessons as well as EXERCISES. Exercises are what I am primarily looking for, if you know of any website that tests you on sentences or something, or a book with an answer sheet at the end of the book etc...

In advance, thank you.

Grammar O How I hateth thee....

The Chinese call it a 语感. It means your intrinsic understanding of the language and how it flows. It is usually used in reference to the spoken language. They have the word 手感 for the formal written language.

I can not learn a proper grammatical rule. I just have to hear it ten thousand times before instinctively I understand how to follow the rules. I have to use that 语感. It is a nightmare for me to even try to think up the proper grammatical rules of Chinese. 了 wasn't understood until several months after I had studied its uses. 把 was at least 4 months later. Result compliments... that was AT LEAST 6 months later.

That commentary was of absolutely no use to you, but I felt like venting anyway. I empathize with you Helixness. Eventually you will get it. Eventually...

Good luck in your quest.

Being a neophyte myself, I am using this website to learn elementary grammar.

http://chinese.rutgers.edu/content_e.htm

Problem is for me at least, after a few more lessons, I'll have to actually know more Chinese in order to understand the lessons. :-)

What I'd really like is to network with one or a few individuals with a similar skill set to share knowledge and practice in a web forum or via email list. You know, see one, do one, teach one... that methodology works with many things in life.

west316, your comment was of immense use to me. I thought it was the only one that worked that way ~~ thank you for making me feel not as lonely now :D haha
all these examples you pointed out are the same issue to me.

I'll check out that website, but any other sites or books, anyone? :)

Googling turns these up, which look promising:

http://www.ctcfl.ox.ac.uk/Grammar%20exercises.htm
http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/PCRopen/selftest.htm

James

I can recommend the book Schaum's Outline Chinese Grammar, at least for my sub-GCSE level. It has exercises and answers, and not too much vocab. I learn grammar easily and vocabulary with difficulty, so found my class did much too little for my comfort level.

wispfrog: I looked at the preview, sub-GCSE is what kind of level? The preview seemed pretty easy, but since it only covers grammar, what can I expect?

Schaum's Outlines are excellent! At least in mathematics they are generally slightly-modified versions of classic old textbooks.

To the original poster...

How are you learning new words without also learning grammar? Are you picking up your vocab from word lists?

Stick to learning words in context; that is, as they appear in real Chinese. You'll learn tons of grammar passively without having memorize rules.

I read Schaum's Outline of Chinese Grammar. There's some helpful stuff in there (the chapter on numbers was great). But the book isn't anywhere near comprehensive, nor does it introduce the complex structures you'll learn quite naturally as your Chinese improves.

The more Chinese you read and listen to *in the wild*, the more grammar you'll pick up without having to resort to exercises, drills, and the like.

I use A Practical Chinese Grammar for Foriengers - some of the vocab they use in the examples is a bit old but the concepts are all there and they have exercises and answer keys.

I would recommend against it though and recommend picking up a Chinese textbook and following along with the grammar points they introduce in the texts (so you'll be reinforcing vocab when you study grammar).

I bought Schaum's Outline of Chinese Grammar from Amazon but have not really gotten around to reading it yet. It seems to have plenty of exercises to accompany the theory.

I have as a textbook New Practical Chinese Reader.

@murrayjames, You are right. But I'm having an issue here, as my queue is a very long list of words, even if I paused all the lists I have, my added words queue is way too long. So yes, I have been learning words from HSK lists and my textbook's list. Although I don't learn them in context, I find it useful as I recognize characters when I read or surf.

I need more speaking practice, that isn't an easy task considering time difference and finding people to talk with (I have a penpal, we speak often).

New Practical Chinese Reader also has a workbook. I never used it, but I flipped through a friend's once. It seemed decent and it is in step with what you are covering in your textbook.

To be honest, I always prefer to focus on the vocabulary in my textbook and review what I have previously learned. Adding HSK words on top of a text book seems a bit extreme to me. After about chapter 6 or so, I would just learn my new words and spend the rest of my time reviewing. After you are up into your third text book in the series, you generally have more than enough to do with your time. It isn't as "aggressive" but I find that people who do that actually end up ahead.

I feel that learning a language is a lot like training self defense orientated martial arts. When you have to use it, you will be freaked out, stressed, your heart will be beating 9000 beats a second and nothing comes out half as well as it did in class. That is why you over train everything. The end result will still be sloppy, but it will be functional.

That is just me, though. Maybe you are different.

That is the method our teacher used through out the semester, and actually went over the first book in two semesters. To me, that was way too slow once I discovered skritter. Skritter enabled me learn much faster than ever before.

I have to admit I really don't focus enough on the textbook and just learn material via skritter. I know this isn't a good method, but it's not so simple to seriously allocate time to other things: chinesepod, textbook, skritter, talking with penpal etc.. in addition to all the other college work. It's all about being serious and sticking to each thing.

These online exercises are exactly what I needed, I'll be able to review a little using that. I really ought to open my textbook more often. Speaking of which: I don't like its workbook. It's too simple IMO (not in the easy sense). You need the tapes for most of the exercises, and the recordings are just plain horrible.

By sub-GCSE I mean I've been doing evening classes for 3 years, and am about to do the GCSE at the end of this year - at least I would have if the class hadn't been cancelled. The vocabulary in the Schaum book was well reasonable for what I knew even at the beginning of last year - there were some things I didn't know, but few enough to be able to cope. But the amount of grammar detail in there is substantially more than the GCSE syllabus stuff by my estimate, which is how I like it! (As I said, I learn grammar more easily than vocab. Comes from having a math background I think!)

I am an English Teacher and a non- native Chinese level one HS teacher. I have found in my (only) 7 years of teaching, that both in context 语感 is very important, but for many, so is the explicit teaching of a grammar structure. Ideally, like Doug pointed out, you should follow along with your text book to reinforce your vocabulary.
My main desk reference for this is Claudia Ross's Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammer: A practical Guide. Its quite imposing and I wouldn't recommend it as a "course book" to work through, but it is priceless when you know what you need a boost with.

What I usually do with my both my English lit and Chinese students when teaching grammar is teach them the 语感 first, and then after one or two class periods, working with examples, I have a summary period where I break it down, have multiple choice options I call "find the odd one out" which is basically 3 bad sentences and a good one, and add in other supplementary examples with old vocabulary, and sometimes new with the English beside it. This allows the kids that already got it to learn something new, and the ones that need the explicit explanation some practice.

But, I digress, I've found on the whole, all my students benefit from a good balanced combination of both 语感 and explicit teaching.