How to learn English grammar - The Big 5 Tenses

(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi, we are the 3 English Experts. I'm Rebecca. I'm Dave. I'm Birgit. And welcome to this episode. 3 English Experts is your English podcast to help you speak better English and create a positive and happy mindset for your English learning journey. Hi, and welcome to this episode. Today, we're going to talk grammar. Yay! Maybe not everybody's cup of tea, but certainly Birgit, our grammar queen. This is her better-than-sliced-bread, as we say in English. Birgit, tell us all about grammar. Yes, thank you, Dave. Well, grammar, a lot of people don't like grammar, and it's got a bad reputation, I think. A lot of people tell me and start with saying, okay, what I lack is mostly vocabulary. But over the years, and even in the beginning, when I started to help people improve their English, I noticed it's not only vocabulary, but very often it's not being sure about how to express yourself correctly. And there is something which I discovered only a few years ago. I really realized, why is this an issue for Germans? Because in German language, we can get by with present tense very often. So if I look at a sentence like, I live in Cologne. Ich lebe. Ich lebe morgen. Ich lebe seit. Ich lebe gerade moment. Ich lebe generell. So that's four tenses that require in English language a different tense. But German speakers would always have the sentence in their head and try to translate it the same. This is what I noticed very soon and often. And then eventually I wrote my book, The Big Five Lean on English Grammar, to specify that. And that came out, was published beginning of 2023. So it's been on the market for a year now. And that's very much down to the point that five tenses really, big five, I call them, to make it easy for the learners and then easy in the sense that they know, OK, I learned a lot of tenses at school, but it's only five I really need to focus on, because this makes up for, I think, 90 percent of daily language and communication. If you're sure about these five, then you'll get more security and find it easier to start communicating. And I think that's so interesting because I love this 90 percent thing. I keep saying that to my clients so often now because it is true and it's a fact. I've looked it up and you can see there's a lot of places online where you read that. And, you know, all of my clients, not all of my clients, but a lot of people come and they say, I want to improve my grammar. I've forgotten everything. And I go, OK, so what? Let's focus on my cheat sheet, which is similar to your big five. It's got all the key, I would say, the key tenses on. And they go, but this is not all of them. And I say, well, I know it's not all of them, you know, but you know that you're hiding something from me. And I'm like, no, but let's do this first, because 90 percent of conversation is based on this. But they still they want to know everything. And I think this is the problem. And like you said at school, you're taught all this grammar, but you're not necessarily told what to focus on. And I think it's exactly the same when I was learning German. I don't know if Dave would agree with this, but I never knew this whole we can just use present tense. That's something I learned when I moved here. I don't think anyone told me that at university or school. It was like, I think what we always we translate the other way. Right. So we would think in present perfect, past simple, you would be trying to like one to one. And I think it's useful to know that you just add on an extra word like tomorrow or last week or since. And yeah, one of the easiest sides to German. But nobody tells you that it's the secret side. The secret easiness to German. Yes. And you see, I come from a practical background. I didn't go to university to study, to become a teacher. So I worked in economic companies before. So I started at a bank. Then I went on to university. Well, first I lived in England and I studied English and I became a journalist for English paper. So my background is very practical approach. And I look at the facts, what's important. Maybe that's the journalistic approach even. But I need to tell you what the big five are, don't I? Yeah, yeah. What are the big five? Come on. Please tell us. Yes. To let our listeners know. So the first one is present tense. When you want to express things that you do in general and regularly. Then there's present continuous, the ing form. I think we are going to talk about what you label the grammar tenses. Something is going on at the moment. We are talking, you are listening to our podcast now. Then it's simple past. Everything that finished at some point in the past, even if that was five minutes ago. And we can talk about signal words maybe that help decide if something is over or not. Then there is the most difficult tense for German learners. It's the present perfect tense. Well, you know the explanation from school. Something started in the past and still goes on. Dauert noch an. We can talk about that maybe. That's the tough one. But just finish off the top five. Sorry. Yes. Thank you. And that's a big four. And then it's a big five would be, in my opinion, the well, as I call it, the well future. To start with, because as I said, I can say in German, ich gehe morgen ins Gym. But you should use future tense in English because people, listeners don't really know sometimes. Are you talking about in general or the future? And it's easy to use well. I mean, there's more than well future. We heard that before. But it's better to use that than no future at all. Yeah. I think the other problem is, you know, I hear science and they'll say, I go tomorrow to the gym and they're missing the I'll. Because the other point, we do contract the will to it all sometimes. And I think sometimes they don't hear that. But if it's missing, even though it's a little all, it sounds different. It does sound different. So I think that's another point to remember that when you're using the will future is often put together with the I. But it's just a I'll. Can you do that again, please? I'll. It's the face. I'm doing the facial expression as well as I'll. I'll. But I think people don't hear it always, I think. And then they miss it when they're practicing. Yeah, you're right. You're right. And what I think is most confusing about the present perfect tense is the fact that it looks like the German past tense. So this idea of having the hab form, like hab and hast, all those kind of things. And then this sort of a past looking thing at the end as well. So it's very confusing for German speakers. And I think that's where the signal words are quite useful. So using connecting the signal words with the different tenses, which is what you did very well in your book. I really liked how you, you know, being very practical. As you said, you put in when you've used this form, then it's good to use these different signal words to help you remember that. OK, signal word. This one use this tense because blah, blah, blah. And I think that's a really cool way of helping people just to remember which tense to use when. Well, thank you. Yeah. And as you said, David, I mean, that's something which is not so often mentioned in school books, that there is a similarity. As you said, ich habe gemacht. People could think that I have done. But the criteria in English is different, isn't it? So I have already done, schon gemacht. That makes it present perfect. Signal word, already. Yeah, already. Or ich habe es gestern gemacht. So I did that. Clearly in English, that's simple past sentence. I think that's why you often hear, you know, what have you done at the weekend? And this is on the Monday. So obviously the weekend is the past. But they still say, what have you done at the weekend? It should be, what did you do at the weekend? But again, it's this, whether it's the thinking German, the similarity with the German, how the German is written or with the haben and then the past tense form. So I don't know. But you often hear that. And it's difficult to get it out of people. Yeah, it is when you've been doing it for years and you've been making those mistakes. But I mean, we're going to get into this, aren't we? We have another episode coming up where we're going to talk about typical mistakes and how to fix them. That's the most important thing that we are going to give tips on, you know, how to fix these problems. So just a last word on my book, which is really compact. So it's got like 110 pages, small size. So it's not too much to look at, not too much to read. It's got some exercises and things to the point. But really, the idea behind is just that you are able to look at it over one weekend and to get an idea about the five tenses and make life easier because I myself like it short and clearly explained. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what I tried to do in this book particularly. Yeah. And Dave, there's some extra stuff to go with the book, right? I thought that was really cool how you've got a section with different exercises. And so I took some of the exercises and put them into a interactive quiz system. And so for anyone who's interested to try out which tenses they want to improve or do a little quiz on, take a look at the show notes and you'll find the big five and five different quizzes for the different big five tenses that Birgit just mentioned. So I think that was a really cool book. I highly recommend going out and getting it for those. You know, just try to get the five in order, especially that present perfect, which is a tricky one. And I think that's such a good example, David, of how we work as a team because I couldn't have done those quizzes myself because I'm not a tech lady. You're a tech guy. And Rebecca, she's always got so many ideas about, I think she's going to talk about other aspects of grammar when it comes to grammar. But I think that's really an asset. I appreciate that. Thank you very much. Yeah. Working together. So that's teamwork. We love it. We love it. I appreciate it. Never change a winning team, as they say. Yeah, absolutely. OK. I mean, the other thing we wanted to talk about was a little bit about just a bit about mindset of grammar, you know, because I think a lot of people have these experiences at school where they've, I don't know, had terrible experiences with grammar. You know, they were learning a language, whether it's English or another language. And, you know, I see that when I say to them, OK, so now we're going to do some grammar. And they kind of glaze over. The eyes go a bit. And it's this fear. They have this real fear of, oh, well, I didn't understand it at school, so I'm not going to understand it now. And they kind of block. And there is the amygdala hijack, it's called. It's a part of your brain called the amygdala. And when you felt threatened before or uncomfortable or perhaps you had a teacher who was very critical or told you at school, you know, I have clients who say, oh, when I was 14, my teacher told me I was no good at English, you know. And it's like, you know, you're 47. Move on. They still hold on to this terrible baggage years and years later. And it's because of this brain reaction. Your brain has reacted in a way that's made you feel uncomfortable. And so these memories of grammar and it's only grammar, you know, it's nothing. It's not really threatening. People find it threatening. And so I think this is the other point is to try and take a new approach, you know, buy a biggest book, look on some YouTube videos, go online and don't really focus on what you learned in the past. If it was a negative experience, maybe you had a great teacher who knows. But, you know, move forward. Don't let that define your grammar. Now, your grammar can improve. And it could be that you see new ways now that, oh, actually, it's not that complicated. No, I didn't know there were signal words. People say to me all the time, oh, I didn't know since was a signal word. And I'm like, of course it is. It's so easy since present perfect. And so there are new tricks and tips to and there's better material to use. We talked about material last time. But I think this point of let it go and also don't worry too much about terminology. This is present perfect. And I'm like, I don't know. Why is it called that? Why? It's not perfect. It's rubbish. It's confusing. It's confusing. And so don't get hung up on these wording like big. You said before, you know, I always call continuously inform. I've always called it that because people just and some people call it progressive. Some people call it continuous. But I think don't get too worried about the names of everything. If you just understand the format is right. Yeah. And maybe even we had I drew some pictures of animals. Obviously, it's a big fight referring to the animals to make it easier. I don't know whether that makes sense to the listeners. There were some people who think in pictures. So I'm sure there's somebody who knows. Inform is the leopard because the leopard is moving. He's running. He's in continuous progression. So what are the other ones then, Birgit? The animals are what? Yeah. Well, the animals and what do they signify? I didn't. Well, there's a section. Actually, it was really nice when Rebecca, who proofread my book nicely. Well, that was a great thing. She commented on that that really fitted. So I have the elephant for the simple present to say study. So Eddie every day going along. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. And then we've got the leopard is continuous. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Running on the move. And the simple past is the what the arena was the rhino. Yeah. Because he doesn't want to change. It's the past. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can't. It's finished. It's over. It's stubborn. Stubborn. The lion, the dangerous and difficult. So that's tricky. I think that fits really well. It's tricky. Yeah. The last one is the wildebeest. Is it wildebeest? The big five. Yeah. Yeah. But he's running away. He's going off into the future. Yes. Off I go. Yes. Well, I will see you tomorrow because I'm going to get eaten or hunted quite quickly. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I'm off. I think that also helps to remember the different tenses when you think about it that way. Absolutely. Hooks, you know, you need these hooks. Hooks, yeah. People, everyone's brain is so, you know, wired differently and we all need different, some people need a visual hook, some people need a word, some people need a really logical like word flow. So anything that helps, why not? And I think that's what went wrong in the school times, you know, I mean, the school teachers at least back in our day, maybe I think Rebecca from England would probably agree with me, you know, they didn't really think about the different ways of learning, the different types of learners, what people wanted or how people learn best. It was just, you know, the sorts of lessons and that was it. There was no real help for us in that respect. So absolutely cool idea. Learning styles. I think there's much more research now into learning styles, how people learn and how people learn differently. And I mean, I think I'm a big believer in quizzes. I think quizzes are a cool way to learn a language because you're seeing what you know and what you don't know straight away, pretty much. And so that's one thing I'd wanted to talk to you about today, guys, is presenting not only Birgit's quizzes that I told you about before, but also two other websites that you can go to if you want to train your English grammar, not just the Big Five, but also other ones as well. So two major ones, the EnglishClub.com, all these will be in the notes down below. So don't worry. It's a little bit difficult to navigate the website, but if you go along, scroll along, there should be a bit that it's called eQuizMe. And in there, there are a whole load of quizzes that you can do. And the second one is using English.com. This is also loads of quizzes again. But the good thing about this is you can also download the printout, so the worksheet if you like. So you could also keep that in a paper form, physical form, maybe write on the answers afterwards or, you know, for notes or something like that. So they're just two. I mean, there's loads and loads of websites with quizzes, grammar explanations, this and that. But just as a starter, our Birgit's top five, and then we've got the EnglishClub.com and then usingenglish.com, two others where I would recommend going and looking for quizzes for helping you to learn. Okay. Thank you. Super. So we will look more into the mistakes, as Rebecca said, in one of the upcoming sessions. But next time, I think this will be carnival season, the fifth season here in Germany. I just learned that David also lived in Cologne for 10 years. I lived in Cologne for five years. So Rebecca is not a carnival fan. We will have her. I'm Hessish. Although it is a thing in Hessen, but it's Frankfurt is very, there's not a lot going on at carnival. I think we will do a carnival session that will be out on Rosenmontag again. That's a word we need to find an English expression for. So hopefully you'll be listening and tuning in and learning about the carnival season. Carnival vocabulary. Why not? Okay. Before we come back to grammar. Yes. A bit of a break in between. Thanks for listening. Yeah. Thanks for listening. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye. Thank you so much for pressing play today. If you have any comments, questions, or perhaps suggestions for future episodes, feel free to contact us at our website, 3englishexperts.com. Have a great day and see you next time.