I’m a former high school English teacher, and I spent a lot of years teaching grammar. To stomp grammar in any language, you need to understand subjects, direct objects, indirect objects, and verbs, both transitive and intransitive. Transitive verbs require a direct object, as in “Raise the curtain.” Intransitive verbs can’t take direct objects, “The curtain rises.” In English, we have no way to identify these building blocks of speech other than sentence order: Mother (subject) brought (verb) the children (indirect object) lunches (direct object). If you put these sentence pieces in a different order, it doesn’t make sense: The children lunches brought mother.
In Japanese, it’s easy to know what each building block is because of the particles. Subjects are marked with が. ははが Indirect objects are marked with に and means to/for. They usually come before the direct object. こどもたちに Direct objects come after the indirect object and before the verb. ひるごはんを Verbs come at the end of the sentence. もってきました。So, the sentence in the correct grammatical order reads: ははが こどもたちに ひるごはんを もってきました。Japanese word order is a bit freer than English because the grammatical function of each piece is marked. Consider こどもたちに ははが ひるごはんを もってきました。It still means the same thing, but the word order is different. “For the children, mother brought lunches.”
It works the same way when using phrases instead of single words. こどもたちのははが The children’s mother こどもたちに for the children こどもたちのだいすきなひるごはんを the children’s favorite lunches もってきました brought. You can add other phrases about where the children were, the time of day, why mother brought the lunches, but the basic structure remains the same. ___ が ___に ___を ___ verb.
If you memorize this sequence and the particles used to identify each part, you will be able to create a grammatically sentence regardless of how complicated the individual pieces become. As you learn more sophisticated grammar, you will be able to add the appropriate additional information to the basic sentence, like this: びよういんのあとで ははが くるまで がっこうにいるこどもたちに おいしいひるごはんを もってきました。Beauty salon after mother (subject) by car for the children in school (indirect object) delicious lunches (direct object) brought (verb) OR After the beauty salon, Mother drove to the children’s school and brought them delicious lunches. The extra pieces in this sentence are a prepositional phrase (After the beauty salon), another prepositional phrase (by car), another prepositional phrase (in school), and an adjective (delicious). Otherwise, the sentence structure is the same.
Now I’m learning how to make each part of the sentence more elaborate with more sophisticated word choices. But no matter how ornate the sentences become, I know how to keep them following the basic order of sentence pieces. That’s how I stomp grammar.