"Teacher, where do you go?"
"Teacher, where you go?"
"Teacher, go where?"
If you have been teaching basic English or been a teacher in an English school in Asia, you will have heard these questions too often. I have, and they grate on my ears! Why can't they get the grammar right? What's wrong with these kids? Is English so hard?
The answer is: they think in their native language, then translate the question/sentence word for word into English. The spoken sentence is in the same order as the native language. Tada! I can speak English! Right. The real answer is "No, you can only speak words in English, not make yourself understood."
The problem with Asians learning English is the lack of tenses and the verb "to be" in our native languages. How are we going to solve this problem? Good old-fashioned sentence drills. They are so boring and repetitious - repeating the same sentence over and over again, replacing the subject (He, She, It, I, You) each time. But, they make the correct grammar stick in your head for life!
I learned Khmer grammar using sentence drills. I may not always get the word order right, but my brain automatically gets the sentence structure correct because of those hours spent repeating drills.
Some things work for a long, long time. Don't dismiss your granny's teaching method. It still works.
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