Rule 1: Learn English Phrases

Hi, I am A.J.Hoge, The director of Effortless English. And Wellcome to the free seven rules e-mail course. Today is rule 1. Now, rule 1 is Learn English Phrases, Not Individual Words.This one just like the other rules, very simple, very easy. And like the other rules, this one is very very powerful. It’s so simple, so powerful.

What is the rule? The rule is always learn phrases, not individual words. So simple. A phrase is a group of words. But it’s just an even a part of sentence. So, for example let’s say you have the word “hate” and you want to learn this word. You can write down the world hate and you find it from the dictionary the meaning and you memorising it “hate”. That’s the old way, that’s the kind of text book way, the school way right?

In school, you probably remember a lot of individual words. You have big vocabulary lists. You try to memorize all of them, you try to memorize all of the individual, single words. It’s not good way to learn. Much better if you learn the pharase, a group of words. And where do you find these phrases? You find these phrases in the real english podcasts that you listening to, in the real english story books that you are reading. And don’t memorize the lists in a book. No, no, no.

You listen to real english and when you hear a new word, you write down. Or when you reading a story book, when you see a new word, you write it down. Bu you do not write down just that word. You are going to write down whole phrase or part of sentence that is end, all of it. So instead of the “hate”, you write it down the “hate”, you would say, you write down “john hate ice cream” you write down whole phrase.

Why do we do this? What is the power of the phrases? Well, phrases give you a lot of information, much more information. Number one, phrases are easy to remember. Because they have meaning. They have kind of a Picture of a story. Especially when you get them from something that you are reading or listening to. You remember it. “John hates ice cream”. You remember the whole story, you remember the who John is, you remember he has an ice cream and he hates ice cream, he didn’t like it. Write theese all of extra information helps you remember the mening of the phrase and the meaning of the word. So it heps you memory, much easier to memory.

Number two, there is a bonus. When you learn phrases, you are learning grammar also. You are not only learning individual word, you are learning grammar. You are learning how to use that word correctly. You don’t need to think about grammar. You don’t need to know rules, it’s automatic. This is another way that native speakers learn english grammar. Because we were children we learn with phrases. We learn groups of words, not just one word by one word, by one word.

Word by word is slow and it doesn’t help. And you don’t learn any grammar. When you learn whole phrase, you write dont phrase, you are getting extra information. Maybe you don’t know it but you are. For example, “Jonh hates ice cream”. Just that word, just Jonh hates. You know grammar study getting the subject in the word the agree.. you don’t need to think about that. Just write down the phrase “Jonh hates ice cream” and study it, review it. Alwayslearn the phrase, not just that word.

And so in the future whenever you say, he hates ice cream, she hates ice cream. You will add that “s” right. Because how you learned it. You learned it correctly. You learned it from a phrase. On the other hand, if you learn it from a textbook you just learn the word “hate” means does not like, you learn that form hate, hate, hate… and you study, study, study you memorize it thats make you make some mistakes. Because you learned it from only this one way. You didn’t learn the other words. So, sometimes you will say “he hate ice cream”. You will forget the “s”. Because you never learn it correctly in a sentence, in a phrase.