Why You Should Throw Away Your English Grammar Book

All your life that you have been learning English your teachers have been telling you to study grammar. They told you grammar was the key.

You had to study all these grammar rules, you had to know the past and the past perfect and the present and the present perfect and the present progressive, and the future perfect progressive – you didn’t know what all of that stuff was and how to do all of the changes to the verbs and you had to know possessives of course, and then there were all the prepositions, endless grammar you had to memorize. All of these rules and probably most of your English classes were focused on grammar rules. Then you were taking tests about these grammar rules, right?

It doesn’t work. Stop doing it. You’re finished. Some people think that’s not right and they don’t believe me, so I have only one question for you. You have been learning all these grammar rules for years and years and years, My simple question is – did it work? Can you now speak English easily, quickly and automatically? Is your grammar correct? When you speak, do you still make mistakes with grammar?

I mean if you’re a fantastic amazing English speaker, probably you don’t need to read this but, I’m guessing if you’re still listening this, it means you’re not a great English speaker, you do not have excellent English speaking and yet I guess you know so much grammar.

I guarantee, you know more grammar than I do because I don’t think about this stuff when I speak English. I just use it automatically, I don’t need to think about the past tense or the present perfect or anything else. it just comes out correctly. Most of the time. I make mistakes sometimes like everyone, but normally it just comes out.

  When you speak your own language, do you think about grammar rules? Of course not. See, here’s the problem with grammar rules, they cause you to think about English, so you are always analyzing it, meaning you’re always thinking about it all the time. Now, for writing that’s okay. I mean even when I write in English, sometimes I might stop for a minute and think: “oh wait, wait, what’s the grammar for that…”, not usually, but of course with writing you have plenty of time. There’s no pressure, there’s no speed. You can write very slowly and then you can write the same thing again and then you can show it to somebody and ask of this is correct.

All of that is possible with writing, so if you want to study grammar rules for writing – it’s okay. Here’s the problem for speaking – there is no time if I walk up to you and I say “hey how’s it going, what did you do yesterday? You have no time to be thinking about grammar, which tense it is and what you need to say.

You need to answer immediately! When you speak, that grammar needs to be correct in an instant. You can’t be thinking about it, you can’t be trying to remember all the grammar rules. If you are thinking about grammar rules, it causes you to speak slowly, it causes you to hesitate and stop a lot. And when you’re listening to people, if you’re thinking about grammar, you’re not really hearing them very well. Am I right ? It causes huge problems. You have to stop studying grammar!

See, native speakers, meaning people who grow up learning English, they never study grammar. I’ve never studied grammar until high school when I was about 16 years old. We started studying some grammar but it was just for academic. That’s all. But by then, I’ve already used correct spoken grammar perfectly, so how did I learn grammar as a child?

How does it happen every British, Australian child learns to speak with good English grammar? Most at least do… How do they do it if they don’t study grammar rules?

  First of all, they’re learning it from phrases, natural phrases and there’s a few other ways that they’re learning grammar which we’ll talk about in some of our future secrets or rules. The point is they are not studying grammar rules, are they?

They do not get themselves confused with grammar rules. If you’re thinking about grammar rules, you’re going to be confused. It’s going to hurt your speaking ability, so you must stop now and never do it again!

  Good news today, rule number two is – throw away your grammar books, burn them, have a party and celebrate.

If you are still reading, I’m glad you’ve found this useful to your English journey. Did you know I’m also doing a fun daily (almost) podcast? It’s called “English In My Mind”. You can find it on any podcast platform. It would mean the world to me if you consider subscribing.

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Mark

Fix your English Grammar

Reference: Mark Larishin, “I understand English, but I can’t speak it well. Why?” originally appeared on Quora, the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. Fix your English Grammar