Let’s talk about grammar. Is it important? Yes. Should you learn grammar? Yes. Well… kind of, anyway. Learning grammar is useful. But only when it's done in a certain way. Ultimately the way people use language just doesn't match the grammar rules. Not the prescriptive grammar rules, anyway. And it’s not surprising, because language didn’t come from grammar - grammar came from language. That is, linguists looked at the language they saw and tried to work out the rules. And yes, there are rules… but really those rules are extremely complex statical patterns that simply cannot be described properly by rules simple enough for us to understand. So what are you to do? Two things, actually. First, watch this video: https://youtu.be/gj3xFoaGMQs They key to grammar is that it is about awareness building. NOT learning rules. For speaking, far more effective is to focus on CHUNKS of language. Native speakers don’t speak using individual words or “grammar rules” - instead, they store most of what they say most of the time in long-term memory as ready-made “chunks” of language. So logically to speak like native speakers… … it makes sense to learn in the way they speak (which is exactly what we do in the Extraordinary English Speakers weekly lessons). Best, Julian

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