How can you master English grammar? The good news is that you can do it. The bad news is that it takes some work on your part. Even more importantly, however, it takes curiosity.

Not many people really enjoy studying grammar rules, but you are going to have to if you want to master English. You are also going to have to study grammar in context - not just in a grammar book. This is why you need to be curious, and why you need to start noticing English when you hear people speaking it or when you read it. That is, you have to pay attention to how English speakers actually use English.

Let's try an exercise. Let's say you're studying the present perfect in your English class, and you've learned that English speakers use the present perfect ("has known" or "have known") to express three different ideas about time:

1) To connect the past and the present (using "for" or "since" - "I have known him for 2 years")

2) To talk about repeated past actions (using frequency adverbs like "usually," "always," and "often" - "We have always been friends")

3) To talk about past actions when the exact time is not important ("already" and "yet" - "We have already met").

This information is good to have, but it's not really enough to help you USE the present perfect correctly. To do that, you need to pay attention to people when they speak and when they write. Can you HEAR the present perfect when someone is talking to you? Can you SEE the present perfect when you read it? Do you know WHY the speaker or writer used the present perfect - and not the present or the past or the future?

Read the following excerpt from a job interview. Can you SEE the present perfect? Can you SEE the past tense? Both of these tenses are commonly used during job interviews, but they are used to communicate very different ideas.

To test yourself, find all of the present perfect verbs and underline them.

Then find all of the simple past verbs and circle them.

Can you see the difference in meaning? Why did the writer use the present perfect sometimes, and the simple present other times?

Interviewer: Tell us about your work experience.

Interviewee:

I've worked in the fast food industry all of my life. I started out as a cook in the back, and I slowly worked my way up. During my career, I've been a cook, a cashier, a utility worker, and an assistant manager. I think I'm a very effective manager now because I've done all of the jobs in the restaurant, so my crew members respect me. Right now I'm the assistant manager at a Burger King, and I've been in that position since 2008. All of my performance evaluations have been excellent. On my last evaluation, my manager told me that my people skills were excellent and that my organizational skills were improving rapidly. I've always had a strong work ethic, which both my managers and my crew appreciate.

Follow the link below to find the answers to this exercise! Good luck!

Joan Pougiales, Ph.D. has taught English as a Second Language for over 30 years to college-bound students in the U.S., as well as to adult immigrants and refugees. Her web site is devoted to helping refugees and immigrants learn English and succeed in their new lives in the U.S. Visit her at http://www.growenglish.com to read more articles and to learn more about the natural English approach.