HOW TO LISTEN TO POINT-OF-VIEW STORIES
To get the most out of a point-of-view story, do your best to focus on the story and imagine it in
your mind as you’re listening to it. Turn off that part of your brain that labels the tenses or thinks about
grammar. Instead, think of a line going through your body. Behind you is the past. In front of you is
the future. Imagine now that the story you’re hearing is inside a box or radio. As you hear the past
version, try to imagine that box sitting behind you, back in the past. When you listen to a future
version, picture the box in front of you, up in the future. Imagining where you would put this box or
radio on the line gives the story a visual component, which will help you to more intuitively
understand the grammar.
While it’s easy to understand this idea by reading sample point-of-view
stories, it is essential that you use audio versions. Remember Rule Three:
listening is the key to speaking. You not only want to learn grammar
intuitively, you also want to learn spoken grammar. That means, just like
vocabulary, you need to learn grammar with your ears.
Learning grammar with audio point-of-view stories develops your “feeling
for correctness,” the same skill used by native speakers. Each repetition and
each variation develops this feeling. Eventually, you will instantly know
correct grammar because it will sound right to you. No need to think about
linguistic terms. That’s when you know the point-of-view stories are
working.
Remember that true grammar skill must happen instantly. In a real
conversation, you must produce the correct grammar without hesitation.
There is no time to think about rules. This instantaneous grammar skill can
only be developed subconsciously and point-of-view stories are one of the
best ways to do this. By using these stories, you skip the unnecessary step of
thinking about abstract rules. You produce correct English grammar
intuitively, without conscious thought. In this way, you use grammar like a
