Practice grammar with texts

The best way to practice the grammar of the Romanian language is to use authentic texts. Even the best examples from your textbook remain example sentences constructed to illustrate a particular situation. They are likely to be less common in a newspaper article, advertisement, novel or e-mail.

If you already know the basics of the grammar of the Romanian language, it is always a good idea to work with authentic texts from everyday life.

How to practice Romanian grammar with texts: Collect texts

Create a collection of Romanian texts. Select topics that interest you personally. Here are some interesting suggestions:

Tip 1: Practice grammar with Wikipedia

Regularly read entries in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. This encyclopedia works to collect knowledge in all languages of the world and makes it available free of charge. Many of the entries that you can find in your language are already available in other languages. On the very left of the page you can see if and in which languages the entry on this topic has already been published.

For example, if you have read the article on "Grammar" in your language, you will also find entries in English, Spanish, Finnish, Romanian and in many, many other languages.

Read articles that interest you first in Romanian language and then in your own language. In this way you can check what you can already understand. Copy sentences that you don't unterstand into a text document. If you have collected some difficult sentences, print out this sheet and start looking up the difficult words in a dictionary and a reference grammar.

Tip 2: Practice grammar with cookbook texts

For example, if you are interested in the cuisine of Romania, look for a cookbook. In addition to useful vocabulary, cookbooks will certainly give you many examples of the construction of the imperative in the foreign language. Because no cookbook - unless you have opted for a pure picture cookbook - can do without instructions such as "Wash the vegetables and cut them into small pieces". In this sentences you will learn how to instruct someone to do something.

Tip 3: Practice grammar with news articles

Start reading newspapers and magazines in the Romanian language at an early stage of your learning process. If you are interested in politics, read a daily newspaper or a weekly political newspaper. If you are interested in sports, look for sports news in Romanian language. You have many opportunities to find publications on a wide variety of topics online. Often you can read articles of these publications free of charge or you have the possibility to buy individual articles or a subscription.

If you're reading a news article in a foreign language, look for words and phrases you don't know. Search for them in a dictionary. Compare the sentences and expressions with your own language. Always try to recognize rules in the grammatical structure of the foreign language. Structures and phrases that you do not understand should be looked up in a reference grammar. Whenever you have discovered a new rule, write it down. Together with the rule, write down the sentence from the article as an example.

• Good list of Romanian newspapers and news sites: w3newspapers
• Free Romanian online news: infoEST.ro

Tip 4: Practice grammar with novels

If you like to read novels in a foreign language, you should always try to pay attention to the tenses of verbs. In this way you will learn how to conjugate verbs more quickly and you will also learn about irregular verb forms. It is also a good exercise if you select all verb forms in the present tense on one page of a book and mark them in one colour (for example blue) and then mark all verb forms of the past tense in another colour (maybe green). Finally, mark all verb forms that refer to actions in the future with red. If you now look at the book page, you will see the time structure of the novel.