3 Tips to Help You Painlessly Build Your Grammar Skills in English.

Erin Nelson: 00:00:00

Today in the Speak English Fearlessly podcast, I'm going to be answering another question from a listener. Manmeet writes, my biggest struggle with the CELPIP exam is the writing task. I feel like I need to focus on my grammar and my formal vocabulary.

Could you please advise me on what I could do? Thanks for your help. You know what? Grammar can be one of those things about English that feels so difficult to figure out.

Like there's so much, so many rules. It seems difficult to even know where to begin and then how to actually go about learning it.

Well, when I get started, I myself have never been a grammar nerd. To me, studying grammar feels an awful lot like going to the dentist to get a tooth pulled.

It tends to be boring and painful, but at the same time, it's important.

If the idea of sitting down with a grammar book to memorize rules makes your brain numb, and if you're looking for a less painful way to learn grammar, then you've come to the right place. I do believe that there are ways to go about learning grammar that can reduce or even remove the pain of it. I'm going to share three of those ways.

Would you like to find out what they are? Well then, let's sit back and talk about it together in today's episodes. Well, hello there and welcome to the Speak English Fearlessly podcast.

This is the podcast for motivated English learners who want to speak English fearlessly and learn practical tips and strategies to conquer the CELPIP exam.

I also love to feature encouraging interviews with regular people, people just like you, who are working towards becoming fluent in English so we can learn from their experiences together. Who am I?

My name is Aaron Nelson and I've been an English teacher for over 17 years, and I now help students prepare for the CELPIP exam through online classes. If you're just joining us, I'd like to say a big hello and welcome to you than.

Thank you so much for stopping by and for deciding to download today's episode. I hope that you enjoy it and I hope that it helps you on your language learning journey.

And if you are a returning visitor, my friend, I'm so glad that you've come back.

It's great to be here with you and I also hope that you are able to sit back and relax and enjoy today's episode and that you get a lot out of it as well. So I want to take you back to when I first started teaching English.

Way back about 17 years ago, one of my very first courses that I got to teach was a TOEFL prep course for some company managers in Mexico City. I remember the course being intensely grammar focused. Our classes revolved around working through a TOEFL grammar exercise book.

Imagine an hour and a half of this twice a week. Ugh. We'd had to learn the rule and then try filling in the blanks or correcting sentences the entire time.

Like I said in the intro, it was mind numbing for my poor students and for me.

Worse, I was just getting started as an English teacher and I hadn't learned many different strategies or approaches to help someone learn grammar yet.

Looking back at that experience, I know we worked through the entire course book together, but I have no idea what, if anything, we learned other than it sure felt boring to do. I can only imagine how it must have felt for my students. And that leads me to my very first tip.

If you want to build your grammar skills, there's a helpful and not so helpful way to use grammar books.

The story I just shared with you, the one with the TOEFL prep course and its intense grammar focus, was the perfect example of how not to develop your grammar skills with a coursebook.

I can't remember a single thing from the experience, and I bet if my students are still using English today, they don't really remember much of that experience together either, other than the fact that it was probably very boring. Instead, if you have a grammar rule book, I want you to consider using it as a reference guide.

Something that you pull down off the shelf and refer to when you need it most. Let it help you solve a problem you are actually experiencing right now as you are, say, writing a sentence.

For example, I have found that when you use it for just in time learning things, like when you are working to actually solve a problem that you are dealing with, I have found that those things, those lessons that you pull out of those grammar books, stick better than if you're just working through grammar rules and activities that don't actually seem relevant to what you need to use them for.

Like what my poor students and I were doing way back when, when I first started teaching and we were working through that TOEFL prep course, we were just stuck doing the exercises. We weren't really trying to solve real life problems with the grammar we were working so hard to use.

And that's kind of why I feel like it was so boring and probably not very effective for them.

So if you do feel the need to work with a grammar course book, like working through exercise after exercise, do your best to apply what you're practicing as quickly as you Possibly can, just like you would if you were learning a new vocabulary word.

For example, if you're working to learn how to use the simple past tense and you've been working through the exercises of a course book, make it your goal to use what you're learning as frequently and as immediately as you can.

After you're done with that coursework, it will help your brain to make a connection between the rules that you have been practicing on paper and real life. And it will feel way less boring. And like I said before, it will be stickier.

That rule will stick to you better than if you're just going through the rules when you actually use it. Your brain will make the connection of, oh, that's really important. And I saw that it works, so I'm going to remember it for next time.

Okay, so make grammar looking looking.

Make grammar learning stickier by actually taking the rule that you're learning that you're practicing in your course book and actually start to use it. So that's tip number one. Tip number two. Read and read and read as often as you can. But don't just read.

Pay attention to how the sentences are being created. Take a moment to think about the sentences that you like. Was it written using the future tense, the past tense?

What punctuation was being used, and why?

As you pay attention to how the ideas are being built, put together on the paper, and as you do this repeatedly, you're going to begin to naturally learn the rules. You'll also begin to see the rules that you've learned before being used, which is a great way to review.

And this is important because you're going to see words and sentences that you can steal for yourself.

So always be asking, how can I use this sentence that I just finished reading in a book or in a magazine, or in an email, in my next conversation or in my next email that I need to write. So always be reading. The more you read, the more you're going to be in contact with the right way to use English grammar.

And as you begin to be familiar with that right way to use English grammar, it's going to slowly start to wear itself into you.

And how you use English grammar, you're going to be remembering, oh, because I read it this way, I know I need to be speaking it this way or using it this way myself. It does take time. This is not an overnight success type of thing. This is something that you will build into your life over time, but it really works.

It's very similar to how writers develop their voice or Their writing skills as they write. Many writers will often take their favorite author copy word for word, paragraph for paragraph, in their own notebooks.

Not so that they could take their favorite author's writing and use it as their own, no. But so that they can notice the style and notice what they like about how that writer is writing.

And when they notice that style, they will start to use that style in their own writing until they build their own voice or their own style around it. Reading to notice the grammar rules is the same thing.

The more you read, the easier it will be for you to notice the rules and be able to notice when you're using them correctly or not correctly in your day to day conversations.

So always be reading and when you're reading, notice your favorite sentences or your favorite ideas and figure out how those ideas and sentences are put together. And then of course, once you're aware of what is happening in that sentence and why.

And by the way, you might need to pull down your grammar book that we were talking about in Tip number one, using it as a reference. You might need to consult your grammar book to figure out how a certain sentence was put together.

When you figure that out, begin using it yourself, steal it and make it yours. That's how you begin growing your vocabulary skills. Tip number three. Notice the language happening all around you.

I've often mentioned this in previous episodes, but pay attention to the English happening all around you as native English speakers are using it. This could be on the television, on the radio.

In everyday conversations that are happening all around you, always be listening to how words and phrases are being put together. And then you try to borrow the same sentences yourself.

This way you're going to be learning grammar without actually feeling like you're learning grammar. For my Spanish students, one of the ways they learned how to use to be, for example, was when we were talking about our ages.

For example, many of my students would say I have. And then they would give their age. Let's just say, for example, 45. I have 45 years old.

I would say I am 45 years old and I would emphasize the word am so that they could hear that there was a different way of saying it. And that's how you should do it too. Listen to how you say something and then compare it to how a native speaker says it.

Be it again on the TV or on the radio, or in the day to day conversations that are happening around you. Do you notice a difference in the way you said it and the way a native English speaker said it? Why? Why was There a difference.

This may be the moment when you pull down that grammar book and use it as a reference tool to help you to figure out that specific usage of, in our example, the verb to be. You use the verb to be for many things, but one of those things are talking about your age, right?

And that might help you to solve that particular problem or that particular challenge that you are facing, but you're doing it in a living and breathing sort of way. It's in the context of learning. You just heard it being used. Maybe you weren't too sure why it was being used that way.

That's when you should grab that grammar book and use it to help you to figure out what's going on and why. And that's a great way for you to develop your grammar skills. So let's quickly summarize, shall we?

The three things that I was talking about today to help you develop your grammar skills are. Number one, if you have a grammar rule book, use it as a reference guide. I was just talking about this. Use it as a reference guide.

Something that you pull down or refer to when you need it most. It's okay to do the activities inside of those grammar books.

It's okay to try to do all the fill in the blanks and all the the lists if that's something that you enjoy doing. But for many people that's just mind numbing.

Instead, I suggest that you use it as a reference guide that you only pull down when you need when you need it to help you solve a problem. Number two, always be reading. Always be reading and notice the way sentences are put down on that paper.

Pay attention to punctuation, Pay attention to how words are put together, pay attention to the verb tenses and learn how those are being used. And then you try to use it yourself. And finally, tip number three, always be paying attention to the language happening around you.

There was our free grammar lessons going on 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

All you need to do is tap into it and be listening to how native speakers are using phrases and words and compare it to how you are using phrases and words to express the same ideas. If you notice a difference, why? Why is there a difference? And then try to adapt the way you say things to the way that they are saying things.

And like that, very often you'll be learning the correct way to use grammar. And if you need that extra help, this is also a perfect place to go.

Circle back to tip number one, pull down that grammar book and try to figure out why that person said things the way that they did. For example, when we are using that verb to be example, instead of I have 45 years, why can't I say I have 45 years? It should be I am 45 years.

And by pulling down that grammar book, it will help you to figure out the rules around using the verb to be in that specific situation. And that will help you learn those grammar rules in a more sticky way.

Like, when you learn it that way, the lesson that you learn will stick to you, and it'll be easier for you to remember than you trying to spend hours and hours trying to memorize endless rules and endless conjugations of verbs. That's just my opinion.

And Manmeet, I hope that this helps you as you are working so hard to develop your grammar skills thank you so much for listening to today's edition of the Speak English Fearlessly podcast.

Please come back next Tuesday, and if you have a question that you'd like me to answer on the podcast, please write me@aaronlpipsuccess.com and I'll be glad to answer it here for you. Thanks for listening. Come back again next Tuesday. Bye.