Effortless English: Learn To Speak English Like a native

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.
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,

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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.
You must trust your intuition and simply listen to each version of the story
without analyzing it. Try to quiet your analytic mind. Relax and focus on the events
of the story. With time, you will absorb the grammar intuitively, and use it correctly
without effort.