Learn Australian English in this vlog episode of the Aussie English Podcast where I talk about what happens when you stop learning grammar. Subscribe to the podcast: iTunes | Android | RSS Download MP3 + Transcript Watch this episode here! AE 455 – What Happens When You Stop Learning Grammar? What a shit day. Do you know what else’s shit? Grammar. What is going on, guys. I’ve come all the way down to Geelong this week to see folks and hang out with one of my mates, James. So, yeah, (I’m) just going to make some coffee. Coffee, coffee, coffee. I got this. This is what you got to resort to sometimes, guys. Oh, look at that! Little chocolate sprinkler. That’s really lame. What do you reckon, guys? Is going to be good or is it going to be really, really horrible. Tear here, huh? So, that looks like crap. That looks like absolute crap. Can you see that, guys? Oh, my gosh! What is that? Is that sand? Far out. That is so funny. Oh, it’s powdered milk! So, I get it. So, beautiful. Then you mix it in anyway, right? Amazing, amazing. Oh, that’s really hot. Really, really hot. That’s not bad. Not bad. Nestlé instant coffee, guys. What is going on, guys? I am out here. Friend’s place. This is my back yard, the garage here. What have we got? The house here and a garden that his parents have really cultivated quite a lot. But, I thought I would chat today about grammar, okay, and, I guess, making a push from intermediate to advanced. So, grammar, grammar, grammar, grammar, grammar. Why should you stop focusing on grammar? Why should you let go of studying grammar? And what happens when you do? We all know the grammar’s kind of important. Obviously, it’s really important for obvious reasons, in any language, if you want to be clearly understood, you need to have good grammar. I guess the point isn’t so much, today, that I want to say that you shouldn’t learn any grammar, but it’s how you go about learning it. So, for a long time, when I was doing French, I was learning grammar out of a book. I would just sit there and do exercises again and again and again, and I wasn’t focusing on a conversation. I wasn’t really using the language as much as I could. And more recently, at least with Portuguese, I’ve kind of done the complete inverse, the complete opposite, where I’ve refused to open any grammar books. I’m not looking up any rules at the moment. I’m just focusing on using the language. I’m just speaking, speaking, speaking. I make so many mistakes. But the interesting thing here is that even though I am making so many more mistakes I’m having, I feel, more complicated conversations, I am using the language a hell of a lot more, and I am not feeling as uncomfortable now when using the language despite, I think, making even more mistakes. So, when I was using French all the time, I would be obsessing over being correct. French has, at least for English speakers, relatively difficult grammar. And so, I wanted to focus on learning that, and I would always think in my head before speaking. I would always be like, “Okay. I want to use this structure. I want to say this certain thing. How do I place this sentence together?