Eigo no Hanon, a grammar drill for speaking: running the beginner book and who sticks with it

Among the English textbooks lined up on the shelf, this series is the odd one out. Most grammar books are made to be read and understood; Eigo no Hanon thinks only about hearing with your ears and speaking aloud, from the very start. The authors are Masahiko Yokoyama and Sachiko Nakamura, and since the beginner volume in 2021 the series has grown to intermediate, advanced, a phrase volume and a logic volume.

The name borrows from 'Hanon,' the basic piano exercises everyone passes through. Not music to perform, but repetition that installs finger-movement patterns into the body. This series brings that thinking to English grammar, a book for learning grammar not as knowledge but as a movement of the mouth.

How the drills work

A drill is practice in recombining English sentences aloud, following the audio's instructions. One drill consists of five sentences: the audio reads a sentence, then gives an instruction — 'Change the subject,' 'Make it past tense,' 'Make it a question.' In the pause, the listener says the recombined sentence aloud. There are two broad patterns: continuous drills that swap words and phrases one after another, and step drills where the number of transformations grows.

This is where the other meaning of the name Hanon bites. Piano Hanon is boring because there is nothing to think about; this book's drills are the opposite, built to spin your head at full speed during the pause. Holding a sentence's shape while swapping only part of it is a load that study-by-listening never gives you.

In the beginner volume, the audio comes in two speeds, slow and natural, both free to download. First check the shape at slow speed; you are fine once you can eventually repeat smoothly at natural speed. A British English audio version is also available separately (paid).

What the beginner volume covers

The beginner volume has 20 units. Part 1 lays out the basic structures of sentence patterns and tenses, Part 2 question words, the passive and the present perfect, and Part 3 infinitives and participles — grammar from junior high to early high school, rearranged from the speaker's side.

The grammar itself is on the easy side. What is hard is not the content but the operation: even with a Pattern 1 sentence, being told to change the subject and the tense at the same time stops your mouth. Read it as a book that measures the gap between 'grammar you know' and 'grammar you can say', and the word 'beginner' changes its meaning.

How to run the beginner volume

The authors' recommendation is modest: one drill a day is enough. Not one unit — one drill. The procedure is fixed: first practise with the book open, tying the sentences to the sounds; once you are used to it, close the book. When you can say the drill smoothly inside the natural-speed pauses with the book closed, that drill is done.

This 'closed book' is the crux of the whole method. While the book is open, your eyes race ahead and pick up the sentences, so it never becomes training for the ear and mouth. A sentence you cannot say with the book closed is still a sentence you merely 'know'. On the other hand, there is no ambiguity in judging your progress: you could say it, or you could not.

The difference between people who keep going and people who stop mostly splits here, too. Those who stop are the ones who tried to push through a unit or two a day and left unsayable drills piled up behind them. Spending several days on a single drill until you can say it moves you faster in the end. Budget 15 to 30 minutes per drill, and this is a book measured in months across its 20 units. It is not a sprint textbook.

It is a poor match for people who have no grammar knowledge at all yet. This is not an explanatory book, so if you do not know what the tenses and sentence patterns mean in the first place, you stall at the drill instructions. If you lack the basics of English grammar, deciding to start over from junior-high English grammar, even though it feels like a detour, will ultimately be the shortcut.

Incidentally, the author, Yokoyama, has posted on his own X account that he is also writing an introductory volume, Hajimete no Hanon, covering a level even before the beginner volume. Once it is released, even children learning English for the first time should be able to train thoroughly with Hanon.

That said, it is not that there is no explanation at all: for anyone who already understands grammar to a degree, the explanations are extremely concise and easy to follow, so there is no need to worry.

For someone who understands when reading but cannot speak, nothing fits better. That gap is exactly this book's territory.

Walking the series

After the beginner volume, the intermediate volume waits. Its drills centre on combining sentences into complex ones, and the way the load falls changes. The audio, too, becomes natural-speed only. You are required to keep up with the natives' unforgiving natural-speed audio.

Beyond that lie the advanced volume, and side paths in the phrase and logic volumes. Each volume's contents and how to choose are covered in their own articles.

In short

Eigo no Hanon, beginner volume, is a drill book for pulling grammar over to the 'can say it' side. Whether it works can be measured by whether the sentences you can say with the book closed have increased. One drill a day, until you can say it smoothly with the book closed. That is all there is to the method — and whether you can keep to it is where this book divides people.

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