CHAPTER 13
The Fifth Rule: Learn Grammar
Intuitively And Unconsciously
I’ve promised that you can learn to speak English well, without studying
grammar rules. I’ve even told you to throw your grammar books away
because you don’t need them. Now I’m going to show you what to do
instead.
It’s actually a very simple technique – one that I believe is the best way to
learn grammar – not only to learn English grammar, but grammar for any
language. The fifth rule of Effortless English™ is: Use Point-of-View
Stories. These are small, short stories in which we change the point of view.
In other words, we change the time frame and we change the grammar to
create multiple versions of the same story.
By reading and listening to these story variations, you can learn grammar
intuitively without thinking of tenses, conjugations, etc. Point-of-view stories
are easy and fun. Best of all, they allow you to absorb the grammar naturally
by understanding the context of stories. That is the key point. Rather than
studying abstract grammar rules, you acquire spoken grammar skill from
meaningful and memorable English.
Point-of-view stories were first developed by Blaine Ray, the creator of
the TPRS learning system. In the 1990s, Ray was a high school Spanish
teacher in California who was looking for ways to engage his students
beyond the traditional drill and memorization methods used in language
classes. TPRS stands for Total Physical Response Storytelling (also
described as Teaching Proficiency) through Reading and Storytelling (see
box). It was Ray’s belief that students could learn to speak Spanish more
naturally by listening to certain kinds of simple stories.
