Do you need to learn grammar?

I say NO. And now I’ll say why.

Grammar is a set of rigid rules. It’s very much like concrete. Can you walk in a concrete dress? That’s what it will be like if you focus too much on grammar. In fact, I’ll say, ditch grammar if you wish to improve your fluency in the written and spoken word.

It would, for example, be grammatically correct to say:

I eat my dinner at 8 o’ clock. I cook chapattis and vegetables.

But this sounds very wooden. Try this one instead:

I have my dinner at 8 o’ clock. I make chapattis and vegetables.

English is all about contexts. ‘Red’ is a colour. It also means a radical left thinker or a communist, anger as in ‘see red’, in debt as in ‘in the red’, to clear as in ‘red (or redd) the room’ for the guests, to celebrate as in ‘paint the town red’, and so on. So, you see, the word means different things depending on the context and the words around it.

Then you have collocations. So, you say it’s raining ‘heavily’ not ‘thickly’. Or that you ‘make coffee’ but ‘do the cleaning’. Or even you get ‘discharged’ from a hospital but ‘released’ from a prison. They are also called connotations.

Then there is the set of idioms. Of course I always say idioms are region specific. So, don’t try it on foreigners. I got into an argument with a Canadian when he insisted that miss the forest for the trees was correct and miss the woods for the trees was wrong!

Nevertheless, there are certain idiomatic expressions that are used rather regularly. She’s very busy, so she comes to see me once in a blue moon. And if she really hates me I’ll say, ‘She’ll come to see me when pigs fly’.

So, what happens if you learn grammar to speak or write fluently? Well, you don’t either—you end up flailing your arms and legs trying to communicate!