Method 1: Learn English by phrases

Hello again,

I hope everyone is doing well.

Today, I will talk about the first learning English method, which is "Learn it by phrase". Since childhood, we all were taught to learn English by individual words by using textbook way. I'm sure you still remember those single words, we usually call it meaning, at the end of a story or a lesson. And our English teacher would ask us to learn it by heart that night as we were supposed to read out loud without looking at the book on the next day. We have been learning this way for our whole lives. But it doesn't help at all to be able to speak English fluently and automatically. We must change that concept. We have to learn it by phrase.


So, what is phrase? A phrase is a group of words or part of a sentence or sometimes it can be a whole sentence. For example, when you're reading a story book or listening to a podcast, you want to learn the new word "cat". Instead of just trying to memorize the single word "cat" by heart, you take a phrase from that sentence, e.g. "Susan loves cats". It's so much easier to remember the word "cat" by learning it by that phrase "Susan loves cats". Because you know vividly in your mind who Susan is and what the word "cats" means. And one more good point in learning by phrase is that we learn Grammar rules automatically and as we speak, we can speak out loud quickly. So, next time when you say, someone loves something, you will automatically and quickly put the letter "s" in the word "love". It's the way the native speakers learn their language. So, if we just learn the word "cat" by heart, the chances of forgetting to put "s" to "love" when we speak or write are higher. So, learning individual words is not useful anymore. It probably was useful in the past because our seniors did not find a better way, I suppose. At least they had much more time to study than we have today since they did not have to spend time on the internet or facebook or youtube.

That's all for today's lesson. So, the next time when you're reading or listening English conversation or story and you find a new vocabulary word, please write down the entire phrase or sentence if it is short in your notebook and review it from time to time. Fill out your notebook  with all the phrases.

Okay, before I call it a night, I would like to mention to you that this blog is not for those who want to learn purely Grammar. If you just want to learn the Grammar rules, all the tenses, this blog is not for you. And sometimes, you'll probably find that I make a mistake or two grammatically. I do apologize for that. I hope you learn something today. I'll see you soon at the next lesson.

Cheers