Why grammar is important yet not important in learning English?

As an English teacher for many years, I have found that teaching grammar in my classes might help my students to take tests efficiently but not for real English.

Remembering grammar rules may confuse you. You may have a huge goal  to be great at English and to speak really fluently but when you start with the grammar learning method I believe you, finally, will drop down. This has been my experience in teaching English for more than 8 years for Thai students.

Focusing on grammar will boost up your boredom and you will be more discouraged than encouraged. This is because there are too much grammar rules to remember in a short time. You may take 3 more months to know them all. However, even you know them all but you may always make a lot of mistakes like I used to.

The question is why grammar is important in using English but not important for learning English. The answer is native speakers always use correct grammar in sentences. Even one native child never says “I go to school yesterday” but he says “I went to school yesterday”. How can he say the correct form of sentence without studying from grammar books like most of us did. According to the research in language learning, they found that studying grammar directly from textbooks or grammar books make less effect than learning from the real English. People who study grammar for 10 years or more may say wrong pattern in their speech. You can change the problems in grammar mistakes into the chance for improvement. I suggest that when you still make a lot of grammar mistakes, you still have a room for improvement. I believe, according to my experiences together with the researches by many linguists, that the best way to learn grammar rules is not to learn directly from textbooks, but the most direct way to learn them by examples. You must see and hear a lot of examples from real English sentences. That is the great way to improve your English ability suddenly without boredom.

In addition, you must stop using grammar books but try to find sources of real English. I do not suggest you to listen to English from cnn.com if you still get trouble in listening to the fast speeches. Besides, you should try to find the sources that you can understand sentences suddenly without translation. By this way, your grammar will improve subconsciously without awareness. You will be able to use English with fun and full of joy. Because you don’t need to be afraid of making grammar mistakes. Though, you may make some mistakes in speaking or writing but it will be corrected later if you listen or read more and more real English. This method is working very well right now. It is the great way to learn English without going abroad. You can stay in Thailand and speak English very well with clear pronunciation. But if you are still trying to learn grammar books, it may be too late for you when your English will be natural and clear for communication.

The goal of all languages in the world is to send messages by understanding the meaning. If you still worry about mistakes, you will never try to use English confidently. This is the way to failure. Try to use English without any fear and remember you must have enough input in English before you can generate output. Wish you all get well and enjoy your English learning by yourselves.

Welcome to our new club!

After working very hard to build up my dream — to make Thai people happy and confident when they use English, I am delighted to announce that your and our club will be completed very soon on Tiwanon Road. Even the club uses my name but the real meaning of “BOMB” is to explode your power of English.

There are many interesting things here for you to learn and share your English progression.

There will be very powerful and precious events every month for anyone who really wants to improve his/her English skills. And, also we will have the place where people can meet and be truly practice English in the real situation.

These above beneficial things will not be limited only for our students. Everyone, I mean, you can use our club & school anytime between WED – SUN from 9.30 – 19.00 daily.

I truly wish this will be a great chance for anyone who likes to improve his skills.

ํYou can go to www.bombengrich.com for more details.

Short note

Why most students drop down and they quit from practice before they can speak fluently?

The answer of this question maybe both easy and difficult.

Successful people have some similar characteristics meanwhile the fail also have the same ones.

I have noticed my students who developed very quickly for many years. I found that the one who quit might have no excitement and strong empowering beliefs towards English and themselves. They might feel “oh, I cannot achieve my goal to be strong when speaking or I don’t want to try something new”. They just felt safe and secure. They never dare to fail so they always fail.

One characteristic that I found in my successful students is consistency. They never quit. Students who possess the power of English never stop improving. They always continue to grow up. They do not care even slow may harm them. Despite they are in the core of the hurricane, they recognize that there are always chance for them to go on fighting. They always try to dig for gold while others give up. So, even the heaven or hell cannot bare him to reach their intention.

With inspiration and passion in practice, I guarantee your success in practice English.

Take care

Put your great fuel in your Ferrari!

Dear Ferrari people! Actually you are language explorers. In addition, I think the idea of language explorer is so important in learning languages. However, I will only focus on English.

Why most Thai students who study English more than 10 years cannot speak very well or even listen native speakers clearly? One of the problem is about education system in Thailand. But, we cannot anything about the issue so it is better to talk more deeply about the thing we can change. Real English does not need to be studied but it must be learnt, in another meaning “explore”. You should explore Engish instead of studying it. The worst fuel you put in the past is the fuel that teachers at your school taught you to study grammar rules and to memorize lots of crazy vocabularies.

For many years, as you know, the result is..

Let’s have some changes. First, if you want to learn English for use in your real life, you need to change your role just very little. Change yourselves from people who are studying English into people who are exploring English. If you explore something, you will find yourselves with lots of fun. It might not be easy but the good news is it is fun. So you can continue your study if you want. But if you are bored, you cannot get so long. English is not your obstacle in learning English. Your mental potency may be either a chance or a threath.

Imagine you go to the jungle in Venezuela where you do not know anything about it. You may have studied plenty of information but you have never experience the real Venezuelun’s jungle. This is like the way most English teacher in Thailand always teach students. They taught students a lot about English but never taught them real English. Students knew very well about the jungle but they cannot survive when they enter there. They lose and finally die.

If you know a lot about grammar rules but you still cannot speak or write fluently. Your speaking is still not automatically. This is not because of you but it is you used to get bad fuel. You may have good information. But the good one is the other bad one.

Steve Kaufmann from thelinguist.com who speaks maybe 11 languages fluently suggested that students should start their language engine by listening not reading. They can read also but reading must be combined with listening.

I truly beleive him because he is not an academician who stay on the ivory tower. Actually, he is a real pragmatist. So I still learn a lot from him and you also can learn the way to learn languages from him.

In case you want to put the great fuel in your Ferrari car, please start learning English by listening. You may wonder what you should listen. This depends on personal competence at English. You should browse for the sounds that you understand them 85% or more. That works. Less than this is not beneficial. Due to your satisfaction, you will continue your learning and exploration. Because of you boredom, you will quit.

Do not challenge your self more or less than you believe you can do it well. Please trust youselves. Trust your brian. Let English comes into your brain. And finally, you will see the difference.

Learnign languages is not difficult but it takes time. You must invest as proper as the result you want to get. Good luck and see you next week in the next article.

More hopeful way in learning English!

According to my latest article about using grammar translation method to teach English, I would like to introduce the more powerful way to learn faster and better. This method is not complicated at all.

I have heard about a book of one of the most famous linguists in the U.S., Dr.Krashen. I have not read it yet but I got summary and also this sparked my idea in learning English.

For several year, most Thai students have faced very boring methods in teaching and learning English. Teachers always tell them to memorize many grammar rules and vocabularies. Some tutorial schools develop techniuqes for easier memorizing such as listening to vocabularied songs and also grammar ruled songs. Many students enjoy this way but after many years of studying, they still cannot use English fluently and even correctly. Moreover, the sadder thing about this is they cannot speak and listen very well. A bunch of time and money they lost is returned to be just intermediate users. It may be waste of time and money.

If you have a Ferrari but you put wrong fuel, you cannot go anywhere.

Imaging you are a great roadster but you put water in the fuel tank, what will happen? Most students are fantastic but they used to have bad lucks about English. They used the slow or maybe wrong method in learning English so they cannot get so far. What will happen if they use the right way to study?

I have seen a lot of my students changed thier skills drastically. They listen clearer, read better, and write faster. Ultimately, I believe they will be advanced users. This is not because they learnt by reading a lot of grammar books and taking the tests. On the other hand, they learn them by powerful method of leaning English that awake their powerful mind.

You too, can be successful in learning English. You can have strong speaking, perfect pronunciation, native intonation and even you can have perfect American or British accents. Just use the right fuel to drive your perfect English engine.