Hello! This is Jack from to fluency.com and this is episode 10 of
Ask Jack - he free series why I answer your questions about learning English
and English language. So, today's question is all about grammar so take it away
Amalia... Amalia from Spain asks, "How important is grammar if I want to speak
English correctly?" Thank you so much for this question. Now, what I think you might
be asking is, "how important is it to study grammar in order to speak English
correctly?" So, I'll come to that in a minute - but firstly grammar is really
important because it's the entire system or the structure of the language so when
we think about sentence structure and tenses and using the right
prepositions we're talking about grammar. So, it's a really important thing. What's
interesting though is that native speakers, generally speaking, can use
grammar correctly - they can speak English correctly, but the majority of them
aren't aware of things like the present perfect or propositions or verb patterns or
the sentence structure and explaining why we do things in certain ways. Now, as
an English teacher I'm aware of this; I know a lot about grammar and the rules
for grammar, the exceptions and everything else that comes with it - but
the majority of English speakers aren't aware of this. But the reason that native
speakers can use grammar correctly is because they have a acquired the language
in a natural way. They have grown up practicing - getting lots of lots of input;
getting corrected when they make mistakes and, therefore, they can use
English correctly - and what happens is it just feels right.
You know, we don't think about the rules when we're speaking
it just feels right in those situations. To highlight this I want you to think
about the verb 'to be' ok so the verb 'to be'. Now this is an irregular and most English learners they get
a little bit scared about irregular verbs and they say "these are really difficult."
"Irregular verbs are hard" but I'm sure that you're very aware and you can use
without thinking things like 'I am; he is; you are" you can conjugate this verb
without thinking and this is because you have seen this over and over and over
and over again. You have said "I am" so many times - "I am tired; I am Jack; I am in
the house."
You have said "you are" so many times before so, therefore, it just feels right for you - it
just feels natural because you've had this repetition and you've had so much
input where it just feels natural.
Now, the traditional way of learning grammar is to learn the rules, to learn
the exceptions, to learn the usage of this, and then to practice in textbooks
and in exercise books. Now, this can help - you know, knowing how to use it and
knowing the rules for tenses and different parts of grammar can help - it
helps you get an overview of how it is used and it leads you in the right
direction. But you want to reach a stage where things just feel right. Where you
don't need to go over the rules in your head and then formulate a sentence;
instead, you just want to be able to speak and use the correct tenses and the
prepositions and the sentence structure. Now, to reach this stage you need to get
lots of input and this just means listening to things; watching things; and
reading things in English - it means having conversations with people; it
means using English in a natural way and it also means getting lots of repetition.
So, we need to get repetition in order for it just to feel right. Now, inside the
To Fluency Program which is my premium course you can learn about the methods
so that you can get all this input and all this repetition and learn English in
a natural way. But a good way just to get started right now is to do something
that I call narrow reading and listening and I talked about this in one of my
other videos she can watch that now, but to go back to your question
grammar is really important we need to be able to use grammar correctly in order
to speak correctly - but that doesn't mean you have to use the traditional ways to
learn it. Instead, we can do it the smart way by getting lots of inputs and
getting the repetition we need. Now, my question for this video is this: when you
were in school, did you memorize verb tables? So, when you were in school or a language
school, did you memorize tables? Leave your answers below this video, thanks for
watching, and I'll see you next time!