> In the mid-nineties, when China’s economic reforms were starting to take hold, I had worked in Sichuan province, where I studied a government-produced book called “Speaking Chinese About China.” In the text, a basic sentence that appeared in Chapter 3 (“He works very hard at his job”) became more complex in Chapter 4 (“Everyone is working very hard; as a result, the output has been doubled”) and then reached new heights of sophistication in Chapter 5 (“We have realized that only by developing production can we raise the people’s living standard”). This was one of my most useful Chinese lessons: it’s possible to speak with increasing complexity while repeating the same simple ideas over and over. Grammar functions as a kind of spice, similar to the way that Sichuanese cuisine uses strong flavors to create satisfying meals that actually contain little meat. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/17/learning-arabic-from-egypts-revolution