Do I need to learn English grammar? Can we do without boring rules? Why is English grammar needed? Do written grammar exercises.

English grammar in its entirety is beyond the comprehension of even most native speakers. As the great linguist of our time showed, the key to success in learning a language is the continuous and massive study of interesting and meaningful content.

To speak English well, you need to learn how words are used and how they are combined to form phrases and sentences. Only listening and reading a huge amount of material can help you understand this. While reading and listening, you should constantly try to notice how to use English words correctly. You need to naturally grasp the natural phrases of the English language, and this means: slowly, gradually, with a lot of trial and error.

English grammar is quite complex. However, there are simple things that help us notice the patterns of any language. The first thing is to feel the main components or parts of speech.

Parts of speech

Nouns

Nouns include people and things such as e.g. table, flower or house . Most English nouns are not alone. Usually before a noun there is ( an, a, the ), or other words, for example: some, any, both . Only if the noun is a general term, such as beauty, love, money or honor, etc., can it stand alone.

Look for nouns. Note the different plural forms. Please note that some of the nouns are never plural.

Fortunately, English grammar (unlike some others) does not divide nouns into genders (masculine, feminine or neuter). In addition, nouns do not change form depending on their role in a sentence, that is, they do not change by case. English nouns are simple.

Pronouns

Pronouns are words such as he, she, it, they, we, his, her or which And that , which replace nouns. When you use a pronoun instead of a noun, you must make sure that it is obvious which noun you mean. If this is not clear, it is better to use a noun to avoid confusion.

Adjectives

Adjectives describe nouns. They can describe color, size, degree, or any other quality of a noun.

You will notice that many adjectives end in -ate, -able, -ive, -ing or -ed . Nouns are often turned into adjectives by adding a letter -y , For example: anger - angry, thirst - thirsty, fun - funny etc. Sometimes, on the contrary, an adjective can turn into a noun when adding -y how in difficult – difficulty .

You just need to observe the language and save the words and phrases you want to learn. Please note that in English adjectives come before nouns. There is also a natural one, as in new, big, red expensive car (new, big, red expensive car). All this is learned from the large number of articles you read and listen to.

Grammar is an element of language about which opinions differ radically. Many people believe that without knowledge of grammatical rules and repeated exercises it is impossible to learn a language well. But often English grammar becomes a real torture for beginners. They get confused in numerous tenses, place words incorrectly in sentences, and as a result come to the conclusion that learning grammar is not necessary, and they can do without this boring activity.

However, it depends on your knowledge of grammatical rules how correctly you can compose a phrase using your vocabulary. In other words, this knowledge determines how competently you can speak and write in English.

Why you need to study grammar

What is meant by this term? Grammar is a set of specific rules that must be followed when using a particular language. These rules are important and necessary just like the rules of any sports game, for example, football or basketball. If such rules do not exist, it becomes simply impossible to play. The same applies to language: if there were no rules of communication, people would not be able to understand each other. Therefore, teaching English grammar is one of the most important and significant stages of mastering a foreign language.

Of course, learning the rules of a language is much more difficult than learning the rules of a game. There is no single approach to the study of grammatical structure, because each specialist creates his own methodology, different from others. Some suggest memorizing the rules and doing a lot of exercises to reinforce them. Others believe that the easiest way to learn grammar is through various language games and situations. Whatever method you choose, remember some rules and recommendations that will help facilitate and speed up the learning process.

Theme description: Why you need to speak and write correctly.

"On the benefits of grammar in human life."

In my essay, I want to reveal how important it is for a modern person to write and speak correctly, and why how well we do this determines how we will be perceived in society.

For some reason, many people believe that the ability to speak and write correctly should be inherent only to professional writers and poets. However, it seems to me that this is not entirely correct, or rather, incorrect in general.

Everyone knows the famous proverb, which says that a person is greeted by the way he is dressed, and seen off by how smart he shows himself. So why does everyone always forget about this simple rule? Why is it considered prestigious to spend a lot of money on expensive clothes, but getting a real, high-quality education is not? After all, even the way a person wrote an application for employment determines whether he will be hired or not. The presence of grammatical and punctuation errors will lead, I think, to the fact that an illiterate applicant will simply be refused.

In addition to the fact that the absence of grammatical errors in writing and the ability to speak correctly helps to get a job, it is also an excellent way to make a pleasant impression on a person. After all, it is much more pleasant to communicate with a competent and well-read interlocutor than with a lazy person who, during his school years, considered it unnecessary to look at the textbook once again.

I believe that observing grammatical standards in writing and speaking will help me in my future life, I will be able to get a good job and will only make a favorable impression on people.

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Closed 2 years ago.

I asked biology, physics, and English teachers - no one knows what “clause clauses” are. They are all very good teachers. They studied at school, and do not remember, do not use their knowledge of grammar in practice.

Do you know any adult (not a specialist) who knows Russian grammar? If not, then why are students tortured at school? I looked at the Unified State Exam tasks - even there there is very little grammar, more tasks on understanding and spelling.

Niemand, sines and cosines are in the Unified State Examination and even in the Federal State Educational Standard (solving trigonometric equations is one of the graduate’s skills). There are no “subordinate modifiers” in the Federal State Educational Standard, and not even in the Unified State Examination, i.e. the state standard does not require this knowledge (and it is not checked at the exit).

To all “voters”: the issue of motivation is the central issue of any teaching methodology. How to explain to a student the need to study certain areas of knowledge if a) adult, cultured people do not possess this knowledge and b) even the state does not require them to be included in the curriculum?

Lyudmila, here is a link to the Federal State Educational Standard, which I studied: http://Ministry of Education and Science.rf/documents/543 - on this page you can download the document itself (ORDER dated October 6, 2009 No. 413 “On the approval and implementation of the federal state educational standard secondary general education"). There is nothing in the document about the syntax of a complex sentence. There are many different requirements (for example, " possession of the ability to analyze a text from the point of view of the presence in it of explicit and hidden, primary and secondary information"), but specifically about syntax - nothing.

To clarify: I studied the assignments Unified State Exam(not OGE) and Federal State Educational Standards secondary general education. The Unified State Exam does not have tasks on the syntax of complex sentences (although there are tasks on punctuation).

I studied the OGE (GIA) tasks last year - there were no terms like “definitive” or “explanatory” there either, it was about sentences with “consistent and homogeneous subordination of subordinate clauses.” I looked now at the above page of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Federal State Educational Standard basic general education- there is also no specifics about the syntax.

Sibylla, can you give an example illiterate use of subordinate clauses? " We learned to speak and write according to the rules" - You, Sibylla, learned; 90% of other students are not.

behemothus, good: here you are, not a specialist (as I understand it, without special education), let’s say, you have a good understanding of Russian grammar. This happens when a person is simply interested in a subject; you seem to like studying grammar. I think this forum is where these people mostly gathered. But do you know someone who knows grammar (distinguishing “expository” from “definitive”) - a person not from this (or from another linguistic) forum?

Lyudmila:

But grammar itself, including syntax, is necessary for a student to improve his knowledge and skills in the field of punctuation, so that he can see the entire sentence and be able to explain and put punctuation marks.

No, Lyudmila, knowledge of grammar is not needed at all for putting commas! This understanding of the issue is precisely what destroys and emasculates school education. Even our government has already realized this. And therefore, the Federal State Educational Standard (FSES) (secondary general education) has long required from graduates not “punctuation”, but “communicative competence”. And “cognitive”: text recognition, understanding the author’s thoughts and the ability to express and argue one’s thoughts. And that is why I asked this question here - because a huge (colossal?) number of teachers (both good and experienced) do not see these changes.

Is it necessary to learn English grammar or is it more important to just speak it fluently? Today, there are two opposing camps: some believe that you need to speak competently, and for this you first need to study grammar, others insist that mastering such subtleties is outdated and unnecessary, the main thing is to speak boldly in English. Which one is right? How to find the “golden mean” when learning spoken English? We will give you our arguments and support them with a useful video from a native English teacher.

To be or not to be - that is the question. Should I learn English grammar? Increasingly, people who want to learn English turn to teachers with requests in the style: “I don’t need grammar, I want to speak English, and not waste time learning boring rules. I can easily get by with three simple times. They will understand me, right? Will you undertake to teach me conversational English?” The reluctance to waste time on boring rules is quite understandable and acceptable, but is it possible to do without knowledge of grammar when talking with foreigners? We propose to consider two diametrically opposed opinions, evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of each principle of learning English and come to the correct opinion.

Principle No. 1: You need to learn English grammar and only then start speaking it

This principle is classic; it was the one that formed the basis for learning English in schools: first, children learned the rules and only then (if they were lucky) practiced using them in speech. Moreover, they did very, very little speaking practice. Perhaps this is why we now have a generation of silent people: a person can understand what is being said to him in English, but he himself does not dare to say anything, since no one simply taught him to SPEAK.

However, this method of teaching has its advantages: as a rule, “silent” ones competently and deftly operate with tenses and constructions in written speech. When writing a sentence, they have time to remember the corresponding rule, write the text and check for possible errors. When speaking, this lengthy procedure significantly delays speech, making it uncertain, although competent.

Why is English grammar needed? There is an important advantage in studying it: you learn to “feel” the English language, you understand what role a particular word plays in a sentence, even if it is unfamiliar to you. Lyudmila Petrushevskaya has an entertaining collection “Linguistic Fairy Tales”. All words in it, except prepositions, are made up. However, thanks to our understanding of grammatical rules and the developed “feeling” of language, we intuitively understand what is being said. You can read these fairy tales on the RuNet and see for yourself.

Principle #2: Why learn English grammar? The main thing is to speak it

The principle is modern and very fashionable. Its viral spread is not the fault of polyglots, as is commonly believed, but of those who misinterpret their words. Polyglots are talented people (and they work hard on themselves!), they often say: “I didn’t learn grammar, I just memorized whole phrases, and now I use them competently.” Great, right? After a couple of such statements, almost every site considered it necessary to write a “scandalous” article revealing the “main secret” of learning any foreign language. We will reveal this secret a little later. First, let's look at the disadvantages of this principle.

The disadvantage of studying grammar is that failure to understand grammatical structures entails a failure to understand the interlocutor as a whole. And your own speech becomes quite poor, because out of many aspects of the tenses of the English language (the groups Simple, Perfect, Continuous, Perfect Continuous, as well as the passive voice), you use only three tenses of the Simple group. Are you “cutting down” or impoverishing your English too much?

Is it necessary to learn English grammar or is it more important to speak? Looking for a middle ground

We do not support any of the above opinions for two reasons:

1. The “Grammar first, speaking second” technique is hopelessly outdated. Modern language courses and online English schools work using communicative methods. That is, you start speaking from the first lesson. Grammar in this case is studied in the context of the topic under consideration. The teacher does not focus on clear rules, but devotes more time to practicing grammar during speaking practice. This is the optimal teaching method accepted all over the world.
2. The “Speaking is important, grammar is not important” technique is also not useful for English language learners, and to put it bluntly, it is a failure. We have picked up the idea of ​​polyglots that there is no need to learn grammar, and now we ask our teachers to simplify speech to the level of a child. However, we can say absolutely unequivocally: absolutely ALL polyglots studied grammar, only their approaches were different. We suggest you consider them:

• Classical. If a polyglot wanted not only to learn how to exchange simple phrases with foreigners, but also applied for the position of translator, he did not neglect the usual grammatical aids. A striking example is the Hungarian polyglot Kato Lomb. This lady mastered 16 languages ​​and did not hesitate to study grammar exercises. Do you want to learn languages ​​like her? Then check out our article "".
• Modern. Time does not stand still, and now polyglots have somewhat changed their approach. You can read a lot of useful information about such people in the article “”. Now we recommend that you watch an interesting video. Its author reveals a small secret to learning a language, which is usually used by polyglots. You won’t find any special “secrets” in the recording, but the speaker very clearly and understandably explains how not to learn grammar and at the same time... study it.

As you can see, the “secret” comes down to one of the principles of the communication technique. When learning English, you don’t need to focus on the rule itself, on its clear formulation. Listen more, try to perceive the forms of constructing sentences by ear. The author of the video believes that grammar should be taught the same way children learn to speak - they perceive everything by ear. This technique is suitable for the native language, when the child is constantly in the environment of the language being studied. But how effective this approach to learning grammar is for a second foreign language remains a mystery. Therefore, according to the communicative method, students not only listen to the correct grammar, but also use it themselves, coming up with their own examples using the words they have learned.

Do not be surprised when those who ignore the rules of grammar also ignore the law. After all, the law is just so much grammar.

Don't be surprised when someone who ignored the rules of grammar also ignores the law. After all, law is, to some extent, also grammar.

Now let’s derive a few principles for learning English grammar “in a modern way”:

1. Learn English grammar in practice

Memorized formulations of rules without practical application will only slow down your speech. It is much more useful to read the wording once and make 10-15-20 sentences using this rule - this is a practical, not a theoretical application of grammar.

2. Listen to how native speakers speak and learn from them

3. Read books

When reading, you use your visual memory: you see how a sentence is constructed, what tense is used in this or that case, and gradually remember when and what tense or grammatical construction to use.

4. Be sure to choose materials that interest you

A captivating book, video or podcast will completely capture your attention, and you will consciously listen to the recording or read the text. When reading or listening automatically “because it’s necessary,” attention quickly dissipates, so there can be no talk of any study of grammar.

5. Take advantage of every opportunity to speak English and don't simplify your speech.

Try to pick up 1000 useful English phrases and use them in a conversation with an English-speaking friend, fellow students in an English study group, teacher, etc.

6. Do written grammar exercises

In addition to speaking, you also need to learn how to write correctly, and this skill develops only by doing grammar exercises. Also, remember that some people don't speak English because they are afraid of making a mistake. And the written exercise will become your “rehearsal”, so speaking will no longer be so scary.

Competent written speech is a must-have for a modern person. As a result, we would like to lead you to the opinion that the question “Is it necessary to learn English grammar?” the answer can only be yes. And it must be taught correctly: using modern methods, using various exciting and entertaining materials. The words “grammar” and “literate” are related, so you can become a literate person only by knowing grammar. And interesting articles will help you master it: “”, “”.

If you feel confident in all tenses and constructions, but have difficulties with speaking, we will be happy to help you “get talking” and learn how to use all your knowledge in practice. Try signing up for , after a few lessons you will see that speaking English is easy.