This week we have a special guest writer – Robby Kukurs from English Harmony. On Monday he spoke about how you can speak better English by not worrying about things such as grammatical terms. Today another way to improve your spoken English – by paying attention to natural speech patterns:
A number of years ago I’d review my grammar related notes regularly, and as a consequence I developed a habit of analysing my own speech which made it impossible to speak spontaneously and without consciously applying grammar rules to the sentences I produced.
Now I’ve abandoned this practice altogether, and I’ve forgotten most of the specific grammar terms I used to hammer in my head believing that they would help me speak fluently!
Acquire English Grammar Through Naturally Occurring Speech Patterns
Speech patterns play a major role in natural English grammar acquisition.
Basically the whole process goes along these lines:
- You hear or read a certain English sentence or a phrase, for example – “Had I been there, I would have helped her!”
- You make a conscious effort to imprint that sentence into your mind by repeating it a few times.
- You make sure to use the same structure and word arrangement – “Had I …., I would have…” – when speaking about different topics with your friends or workmates:
“Had I known it before, I would have told her!”
or
“Had I seen you at the party, I would have definitely looked you up!”
Second Nature
After a while, you’ll be so comfortable using that particular grammatical construction that it will become second nature to you and you won’t even give it a conscious thought.
Now, the importance of such and similar speech patterns resides in the fact that they contain all the necessary English grammar and you’re absorbing it all without actually becoming fully aware of what this or that particular word arrangement means in grammar terms!
The above example was a typical ‘If sentence type III’ or ‘third conditional’, but tell me now honestly – do you really think you need to know what it’s called to be able to use it?
– Robby Kukurs
How about you?
Do you try to remember useful patterns in English? Do you have any other tips on how to speak better without worrying about the grammatical terms? Please leave your comment below, we’d like to hear from you!
About Robby Kukurs
This is a guest post from Robby Kukurs, who writes about confidence and improving spoken English on his blog EnglishHarmony.com. He also regularly posts videos about improving English fluency on his YouTube channel.
More On Get Into English
Present Perfect Phrases And Expressions
Photo credits
Image: Atilla Kefeli
Licence: CC by 2.0
Great stuff Robby.
One thing I noticed when I was learning Spanish a few years back was that one of my teachers did quite a bit of speaking about her life, giving her opinions and so on, before we talked about the same topic. In contrast, another teacher spent a lot of time explaining the grammar, highlighting the names of the grammatical forms (eg first conditional, second conditional etc).
So which teacher gave us more real-world input? With the first one we still did grammar, but the input, the language we took in, was far more natural and useful, and as a result I believe I made more progress with her.
I was also far less stressed when the first teacher asked us to talk about what we’d do if we won a pile of money compared to the second one saying: “Right, use the second conditional to talk about the hypothetical situation of you winning a lot of money. Don’t forget to say “If + past and then….”
Totally agree with you that you can use grammatical forms well without worrying about the name of some of these terms, especially when the name seems rather silly.
I need to learn more speaking patterns in English.