Hey guys! Welcome back to the English Fluency Journey. I'm Anna.
And today I want to give you my take
on such a hot topic. Which is
Can you speak English without grammar?
Can you speak good English without grammar?
and without learning grammar rules intentionally?
I’ll tell you right away this is not my case.
I have learned grammar separately and intentionally.
And I don’t have an intention to speculate on this topic but I do have some thoughts that I want to share.
And I think that it is very much possible for non-native speakers to
speak English and not to learn grammar rules.
But when I say not learning grammar rules mean not to sit, memorize and
drill them; I don’t mean ignore the rules.
Here's the thing
if you asked just some random native speakers about tenses
all those grammar rules
how to ask questions, auxiliary verbs, phrasal verbs and a word order in those.
They would probably just tell you
“Back off man! I’m simply speaking English. I don't know how explain these things and I don’t need to”.
And that’s true they don’t need to unless they’re teachers.
And you don’t need to know how to explain all these things and learn them by heart unless you’re a teacher.
I think that you just have to understand them and be able to use them naturally without even thinking.
Do native speakers speak perfectly, grammatically absolutely correct? No.
Within every language there’s a literaly language that you can find only in books.
There are rules for writing and formal writing.
When you’re writing an essay for college
you want to stick to the rules of formal writing,
you have to know grammar.
But when you’re texting someone or writing a post on Instagram, you don’t want it to be too formal. You want it to be casual.
And that is an informal - spoken language. It’s the way that people communicate.
And sometimes they use phrases that are grammatically incorrect. Because how many times have you heard from native speakers
“This is the way we say this”? “This is the way people speak”
“Yes, it is grammatically incorrect and when you say this phrase grammatilly correctly it sounds weird to us and too formal.”
Now, think about yourself and your native language.
I bet that you don't know how to explain a lot of grammar rules and I bet that you don’t even know a lot about them.
And yet, still, you don’t have problems with expressing yourself.
You may not even be grammatically correct sometimes, but I think that’s not a problem at all. Right?
Yes, of course, we, and native speakers of English went to school and have learned all these things
a long time ago. But let’s take a look at children, preschoolers.
They haven’t learned grammar rules, but yet they can speak English and do speak English.
And sometimes pretty good English for their age.
Why?
Because I think first they listen a lot.
Second, they’re very attentive.
And, third they actually speak.
And they don’t give a damn about their mistakes they just want to express themselves.
And, sometimes they speak non-stop. Like my son for example
he can repeat a word like 30 times in a row and then another one.
My fourth point is that they mimic adults all the time reaping
the exact words they hear
and using all that they’ve heard when they need or want to say something.
And the most important thing is that they are exposed to language
Yes they’re not always grammatically correct and neither are adults, even though they’ve learned all these grammar rules.
And there’s actually scientific confirmation that spoken
language differs from written language. And that has to do with the brain
and the speed of processing information.
When we write we have time to think about grammar
and to find a way to express our thoughts in the best way possible.
I’m not going to go into details because I’m not a scientist and you can find this information if you want.
If you hate learning grammar then I think, you have to think of
yourself as a child and do a couple of things.
If you’re like me and you don’t live in an English speaking country
then you have to create this environment to immerse yourself in the language.
Like literally start listening and watching everything in English,
follow someone on social media who posts in English, some native speakers.
And this is the first thing that you want to do. You have to be surrounded by English,
you have to be soaking it all up.
Pay close attention to the way that people use English in different life situations.
This is not passive listening. Children never passively listen.
They always learn from the environment. But with children it happens
subconsciously and automatically. It’s nature.
And you’re just going have try a little bit more harder.
And don’t forget why you’re doing this. Don’t forget your ultimate goal
and that this is beneficial for you in every way.
Then what else children do? They repeat everything all the time.
Like little parrots. And it seems that they’re never tired of this.
And this is extremely important to repeat what you’re hearing a lot,
all the time and using what you’ve heard in your speech if you don’t want to dig into grammar rules.
. And if you don’t have anyone available to ask how to say something you have to look it up.
And it may be enough for you
knowing that in this situation you have to say this like this
and use this tense and not knowing why.
Then you reapply this knowledge to another situation.
But even if you don’t look up everything you
will be able to grasp something and understand things from the context.
This is the way our brain works - it builds connections and associations.
And then of course speaking and using a language! You’re going have to do this all the time.
No days off, no excuses. This is like crucial.
If you do live in an English speaking country then it’s a lot easier for you.
If you don’t then there are so many ways you can do this, I mean find people to talk to.
And I’ve talked about this a lot a lot a lot in previous videos.
I’ll give you the links somewhere above my head where you can find this information in the description boxes to those videos.
So it is very much possible. I know so many examples
when teenagers moved to an English speaking country
and in a couple of years they picked up the language.
And I asked “How did you do it?”
the usual answer of these success stories
because let’s face the truth not everyone is successful in this
So the answer was
“I just made friends, tried to be as social as possible and communicated.’
So your main go-to things will be
attentive listening, repeating, communicating and immersion.
Listen carefully and a lot. There has to be a really massive input.
And reproduce what you’ve heard and actually use a language.
The point is in taking action.
Now guys. I’m not encouraging anyone not to learn grammar.
I am personally a curious person. I always want to know why and all the options.
And I am willing to sit and to do my research.
And it’s not like I learn grammar by heart. I try to understand it.
Am I always correct? No.
Do I know everything? I don’t think that it’s possible.
I’m simply speaking from my experience. Because the more you use a language
the more questions you have and you’re trying to find answers to those questions.
And when you communicate with people, when you make mistakes, when you’re in those awkward situations,
of course you want to know how to say what you’ve said correctly
to avoid embarrassment the next time
and you’re searching for information. And you’re starting to educate yourself.
This is kind of inevitable.
And at the beginning you do this a lot but less and less over time.
Thanks guys for watching this video. I want you to leave
your take on this topic in the comments.
And I don’t want anyone to argue
I just want people to share their thoughts and experience.
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