Hi, this is A.J. Hoge, the director of "Effortless English". Welcome to day 5 of the seven rules to excellent speaking e-mail course. Now, remember? Before in one of the other rules I told you: do not study English grammar. And maybe you're thinking, "oh, my God, but how do I learn grammar and how can I use correct grammar?". Well, today I'm going to tell you how to learn English grammar without studying grammar rules. Mmm, that's a little tricky. How do we do that?

Well, there's actually a very simple, easy, powerful technique. And research shows that this technique is the best way to learn grammar. English grammar. Grammar for any language, actually. So, what is this technique. Well, it's called point of view stories. Point of view stories. Or point of view mini-stories. "Mini" means "small". So these are small stories. Now, what's the secret to these stories? How do they teach you grammar?

Well, what we do is, we tell the same story but we change the point of view. In other words, we change the time, for example. Or we change the grammar somehow in the story. Let me show you an example, a very simple example. When I teach point of view stories, I teach a funny or short little story. And maybe the first time, I teach it in the present, it's happening now. So, for example:

There is a boy, his name is Bill. Bill goes to the store. He buys a bottle of water. He pays two dollars for the water.

Ok, that's it. That's the... that's our little story right now. So that was in the present, and all you need to do is just listen to it. Listen, listen, listen, listen again. Deep learning, remember? you gonna repeat it a lot of times. Now, how do we learn grammar with a story? Well, next, I tell the same story, but now it's the past:

There was a boy named Bill. Yesterday, he went to the store. He bought a bottle of water. He paid two dollars for the water.

That's all. Now, in a normal story, in a normal point-of-view story, it's longer and it's more difficult, of course. In my lessons, my point-of-view stories are longer, they're more difficult. But this is an example. It's an easy example. So now, you've got the present, you've got the past, you listen to that story in the past many times.

Don't think about the grammar rules, you do not think "oh, this is the past tense, oh, paid is an irregular verb". No, no, no, don't think about that. Just listen to the story and understand the meaning. That's all you need to do. Listen to the first story, understand the meaning. Listen to the second story, understand the meaning. That's all. It's easy, effortless grammar learning. So next, I might tell the same story in the future. So I'd say, imagine, imagine in the future, next year. Imagine:

There will be a boy. His name will be Bill. He's going to go to the store and he'll buy a bottle of water. He's going to pay two dollars for the water.

So that's the end of our short example in the future. So, what do you do? You just listen to this little easy story in the future. You listen in the present. You listen to the past. You listen to the future. And then I can do it again, I can practise any kind of grammar with this. For example, I might say, ah...

There was a boy. Since last year, he has gone to the store every day. He has bought a bottle of water every day. And every day, since last year, he has paid two dollars for the water.

So, you don't need to know the name of the grammar or the verb tense that I'm using. It's called the present perfect but you don't need to know that. I don't want you to think about that. All you need to do is listen to the story. I'm using words to help you understand the meaning. I said "since last year". So now you understand that these changes, these verbs, they change because something happened in the past and has continued for a while.

But you don't need to think about that. That's why these stories are so easy and powerful. You just listen. You listen to story number one. You listen to the story number two, the story number three, the story number four, and you learn the grammar like a native speaker, like a child. When you learn grammar like this, using these kinds of stories, it goes deep. You learn to use grammar automatically, quickly. You learn to understand it instantly, quickly, automatically. You don't need to think about a bunch of rules.

Forget the rules, you don't need to know them. You want to learn it automatically, the same way I learnt English grammar, the same way all native speakers learned English grammar. Learn English grammar using these point-of-view stories. Your grammar, your speaking grammar will really improve quickly, and you'll feel more relaxed because you'll start to use correct grammar automatically, you won't even think about it. You can stop thinking so much. You can just relax, listen and speak.

Ok? So these are powerful point of view stories to learn English grammar.

Alright? That's the end of today's rule, I will see you tomorrow for our next rule. Take care and have a great day. Bye-bye.