Another wonderful day here at our center in Chennai. Hope all of you are doing great and practicing communicating in an effective and purposeful way.

I keep getting this question from my students enrolled in spoken English classes: “Do I need to learn all of English Grammar to start speaking fluently in English? ”

Well, to answer that question let me first tell you a story. I met this guy in a small town, 40 miles from Boston. He was a farmer and was mostly homeschooled for the first few years of his life. Never learnt any grammar and was put to work very early in his childhood on the farm. How do you think his conversational English is?

You guessed it right! He speaks pretty well. Better than a lot of folks who have studied grammar in India . Why is that?

Most speakers of language learn by remembering “chunks” of words. They either do this by listening to their parents, friends, colleagues, movies or TV shows. This is how all native speakers learn to speak in their mother tongue. That is how a person from UP learnt to speak in Hindi or someone from Chennai in Tamil. This is not to say that Grammar is not important. However, knowledge of grammar isn’t a requirement to have a conversational ability in a language. It is an entirely different issue when drafting business emails or delivering impactful presentations.

Bottom-line

If your goal is to just speak with your friends and colleagues in English, spend more time on your speaking and listening practice. One of the methods we employ here at Success Next is to listen to TV shows and teach new phrases and chunks of words from the show. This will substantially improve your English in a short span of time.

Enjoy the rest of your Saturday and drop by the center for some in person practice. Happy learning!