I immediately recognized the power of these stories, and decided to
modify them for my own teaching system. Point-of-view stories are now a
very important part of the Effortless English™ system.
How do point-of-view stories work? In the simplest version, you start by
listening to a main story – usually told from the past point of view. In other
words, the story is mostly about events that happened in the past.
Next, you listen to another version of the story, with a different point of
view. So, for example, you might hear the same story told again in the
present. Then you listen to yet another version, told as if it will happen in the
future. Or even another version that talks about past events that have
continued to the present.
Each point of view story is basically the same, but the change in time
creates changes in the language used… especially the verbs. By listening
repeatedly to these stories, you easily and naturally absorb the most common
and most useful English grammar tenses. Because you learn them
subconsciously and intuitively, you will actually USE them correctly when
you speak – and you won’t have to think about it!
An important focus of point-of-view stories is that they should focus on
the most commonly used grammar structures. Some students become
obsessed with extremely rare forms of grammar while neglecting the forms
that native speakers constantly use on a daily basis. For example, “He slept
for six hours” is far more commonly used than “He will have been sleeping
for six hours.” It’s far more important to master the first form of the sentence
(the simple past) as it is far more useful for communication. Thus, the point-
of-view stories you use will be limited to only the most common forms.
The great thing is, you only need to listen to these stories a few times
every day. You don’t need to analyze the grammar changes… and you
certainly don’t need to identify the linguistic grammar rules. There is no
need to identify which version is the “simple past,” or which is the “past
perfect.” These terms may be useful to linguists, but they are distracting to
those who wish to speak quickly, easily and automatically.
