Learn English Grammar
03 Oct 2017
How to learn English grammar
So, you’ve decided to learn English and you’re thinking the first thing you need to do is to learn the basic grammar rules. Is learning English grammar important? Of course it is, but it’s only one part of the whole picture. Is memorizing a list of grammar rules fun? Not really. There’s no reason why learning English grammar should be boring. How is that possible you say? Read on to find out.
A New Way to See Grammar
The easiest and most natural way to learn grammar is by listening and speaking – hearing grammar used in a natural context and copying. At Wall Street English your lessons are structured in this way – you listen to people using a new grammar form in an everyday situation, then you copy them and acquire the new language naturally. Just as children learn and understand through experience without studying rules, so can you.
Learning Grammar Step by Step
As any language, English grammar has some characteristics that are easy and others that are harder. For example, a big advantage of English is that verbs in the present tense only have two forms – one form for I, you, we, they, and another for he, she and it. A more difficult element of English, on the other hand, is the large quantity of irregular verbs. The important thing is that you learn these things slowly and gradually, focusing on one thing at a time. Our course allows you to do that by spreading out all the different elements of English grammar over 20 levels and 320 lessons.
Every verb tense in English is used for two or more situations and sometimes with different meanings. The best way to learn these is by practicing them separately so that you can become confident in using them before moving on to the next step. If you try to study all the uses of the present perfect or all the types of conditionals in one lesson, the result is that you are confused and unlikely to be able to actually use them in conversation. Take one thing at a time and master it, then when you’re ready, move on to the next step.
Learning Grammar Can Be Fun!
Many of us have the experience of studying a language at school as children and have memories of doing lots of written grammar exercises and trying to remember rules. For a few people this method worked, but for many others the results were poor and they found English grammar hard and boring.
As a Wall Street English student, learning grammar is fun! You start by hearing new grammar used in an entertaining video story, then you practice it by speaking, and finally, you consolidate your understanding through interactive exercises that give you immediate feedback. Following this, you use the new grammar you’ve studied with a teacher and other students in a speaking-based class to confirm you’ve successfully acquired the new language. Furthermore, you have the chance to do extra practice in group conversation classes as well as fun quizzes online.
Be a Good Student and Make Mistakes
You’re probably thinking that’s a strange thing to say but it’s actually the key to learning English grammar. When you learn something new, a natural part of the process is to make mistakes. If you didn’t ever make mistakes it means you were already able to do that thing at the start. Making mistakes helps us understand what is right. So a good student will try to speak a lot, making several mistakes, but learning from them. You can also learn a lot by listening to other students making mistakes because you can correct them and reinforce your understanding.