Grammar for Visual Learners
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Grammar Without Rules
Teaching English Grammar Through Core Meanings, Images, and Human Experience
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Free online resources
Choose which words and phrase you use based on meaning.
When you think of grammar this way, there are no exceptions. You can see how it makes sense.
Use what you learn and express yourself with confidence.
Carl Eldridge
Real Grammar founder, English teacher in Japan, with a keen interest in education and linguistic theory.
Why I wrote Real Grammar
There was a big difference between the grammar in textbooks and the grammar in my head.
When I became a teacher, I found many explanations of English grammar that weren’t very accurate. The ‘rules’ presented in books had too many exceptions.
As a native English speaker, I have never thought that there are all these rules and exceptions: I make sentences the way I do because it makes sense.
When you study a language, you want to learn how to put words together in a way that makes sense to people for clear communication. This is what Real Grammar is about.
Key Sections In Real Grammar
The Seven Sections
Basic building blocks
This section looks at simple parts of a sentence and the order we typically put them together, and words that are often used when making basic English sentences.
Verb forms
English verbs can be in the present, past, -ing or -en form. This section looks at these forms, what they mean and why we use them.
Options and possibilities
Sometimes we need to consider options and possibilities. When doing this, we often use the words will/would, shall/should, can/could, may/might and must.
Think and say
When we talk about what people said we need to consider two times, the time they said it and the time they said it about. This section looks at how speakers communicate this clearly.
Future and past
There are many ways we can talk about the future and the past – using different verb forms and using words such as will, going to, would and used to. Here we compare these sentences to understand why speakers use them.
Adding information
In this section, we look at how English sentences are flexible and how we can add more information if we like. We provide more detail about something; or give a time, place, part, method or reason.
adding more
When we want to add a lot of information to our sentences, we can add another verb and more to give clearer details about people, things, times or places.
Grammar for communication
When developing Real Grammar, a lot of students told us the same thing: That the grammar they had learned in school was different to the English used in real life.
The English they learned in school was based on rules and remembering what is “correct”. But students want to learn the language so they can use it, remembering the rule is fine for an exam, but how does that help you use what you learn?
Real Grammar takes a fresh approach and focuses on communication: being able to use English in real-life situations and what it all means.
“I learned grammar in China before and the teacher just said that this grammar is correct, and this grammar is incorrect, but I don’t know how to use the grammar to write an article, write an essay or write an assignment.” – Becky, China
“I have learned English from traditional grammar books and it took me many years to acquire and understand the rules, but in terms of communication, [understanding] the rules of grammar is important, but it doesn’t have very much to [do with being] able to speak well.” – Ko, Japan
“I usually have to spend a lot of time and energy to memorize the rules, and you don’t know what’s the point.” – Zoe, Taiwan
Want to learn more?
Check out our online grammar information.
Feel free to contact us if you have any questions.
Understand meaning
make your own choices
Use English with confidence
Traditional grammar books tell you what people say.
Real Grammar explains why we say it.
Traditional grammar rules explain some or most of the uses, these rules only hold true some of the time.
Real Grammar explains the core meaning that is always true, so you can understand why people use it in any situation.