Significantly Improve Your Grammar and Communication Accuracy by Doing These Five Things

Even though some people will try to tell you differently, the real fact is that knowing grammar well is necessary for accurate and clear communication. Luckily for you, you can read this blog for excellent and effective ways to improve your grammar, and you will be on your way to better communicate with others in English.

Learn the essential parts of speech. These are words that make up the language, and they are nouns, adjectives, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections, and articles. They each play a particular part, and to put sentences together correctly, you must understand what the parts of speech are and how they work with other words in a sentence.

• Nouns are the elements that usually act in a sentence, such as a person, place, thing, idea, emotion, animal, or event. Nouns include Sally, Paris, sand, philosophy, happiness, dog, and birthday.
• Adjectives modify nouns and describe aspects or characteristics of nouns. Adjectives include red, funny, lazy, large, and short.
• Pronouns take the place of nouns. There are personal subject pronouns (such as I, she, and they), personal object pronouns (such as us, you, it, and them), personal possessive pronouns (such as mine, yours, his, hers, and theirs), and relative pronouns (such as who, which, that, and whose).
• Verbs indicate actions or states of being and tell what the noun is doing. Verbs include run, sing, type, be, and walk.
• Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, conjunctions, prepositions, and other adverbs. They are words like quickly, well, and slowly. These words often end in –ly.
• Prepositions indicate relationships in time, space, or direction. Prepositions include to, in, on, over, of, and across.
• Conjunctions join nouns, clauses, phrases, and sentences. Coordinating conjunctions link independent clauses, and they are for, and, nor, but, or, yet, and so. Subordinating conjunctions link dependent clauses, and they include because, if, since, while, and although.
• Interjections are words that indicate emotions. These include oh, hey there, ouch, and wow. Exclamation points can often follow them.
• Articles are used to modify and define nouns. The is a definite article, and a and an are the indefinite articles.

Learn to conjugate verbs use tenses properly. English verbs are only inflected (have different forms or endings) for present simple tenses. However, other verb tenses, such as the future ("I will like"), help create mood. Some other words show time, such as "tomorrow," and auxiliary verbs such as do did, and have. Using the verb "go" as an example, some of the main tenses in English are:

• Simple present (uninflected verb, or verb + s/es in the third person): I go, you go, he/she/it goes, we go, you go, they go.
• Present continuous (aka progressive) (am/is/are + present participle): I am going, you are going, he/she/it is going, we/you/they are going.
• Present perfect (has/have + past participle): I have gone, you have gone, he/she/it has gone, we/you/they have gone.
• Simple past (verb + –ed for regular verbs): I/you/he/she/it/we/you/they went ("to go" is an irregular verb).
• Past continuous (was/were + present participle): I was going, you were going, he/she/it was going, we/you/they were going.
• Past Perfect (had + past participle): I/you/he/she/it/we/you/they had gone.
• Simple future (will + uninflected verb): I/you/he/she/it/we/you/they will go.
• Future continuous (will be + present participle): I/you/he/she/it/we/you/they will be going.
• Future Perfect (will have + past participle): I/you/he/she/it/we/you/they will have gone.

Punctuate properly. This is important in written communication. Perhaps you write a lot of business emails. Punctuation shows the starts, the stops, pauses, and relationships. Capitalize the first letter of every sentence and the first letter of all proper nouns (the names of people and places). The main punctuation marks in English are:

• Commas (, ) separate thoughts, ideas, elements, and independent clauses.
• Full stop ( . ) indicate the end of a sentence.
• Semicolons ( ; ) join independent clauses in a single sentence or separate elements in a list.
• Colons ( : ) introduce items in a list, explanations, or definitions.
• Question marks ( ? ) indicate that a question was posed.
• Exclamation points ( ! ) show emphasis, imperatives, or declarations.
• Apostrophes ( ' ) demonstrate possession or create contractions.
• Quotation marks ( ") indicate that you are directly quoting someone else's words.
• Hyphens ( - ) join separate words into compound words, modifiers, and numbers.

Read more often and read a variety of material. You can quickly improve your grammar by noticing how many native speakers use language in a real context. Make sure you read different genres and styles, such as classic literature, textbooks, science-fiction, science books, biographies, BBLC blogs, essays, and articles. Look at the information in this blog again, and while you are reading, pay attention to how sentences are structured, word order, spelling, and so on.

• Keep a dictionary and thesaurus handy while reading.
• Read newspapers, listen to news radio and watch televised news programs daily as well.

Take classes. One of the best ways to ensure you understand the essential grammatical elements is by getting someone qualified to teach you. BBLC, for example, offers qualified and experienced native teachers of English. You should only accept qualified and experienced teachers so you can feel confident that the teacher knows grammar correctly and so that you will practice language effectively during precious class time.

For more tips and strategies for improving your grammar accuracy, get in touch with us today.

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Robert Saunders is the Director of studies of BBLC and has 20 years' experience teaching some of the biggest multinational companies around the globe.