A good command of English grammar will allow you to substantially improve your English. Like Eliza Doolittle from George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion," on which the "My Fair Lady" musical is based, you may even learn to speak English flawlessly. Even though Britain and America are oceans apart, the English standards of those two countries are not as different as the countries' geographical position might suggest. Still, some differences do exist, so be careful if it is the American English grammar you need to master.

Learn general English grammar. Before you can understand the subtleties of grammar, you first need to learn English grammar as it is presented in textbooks, published either in America or in Britain.

Be advised that Americans prefer to use the simple past tense instead of present perfect (have/has + past participle). For example, an Englishman would say, "John is not feeling well. He's eaten too much." Instead, most Americans would use past simple in the second sentence, "John is not feeling well. He ate too much."

Use a singular verb when talking about collective nouns, such as "staff", "team", "government" or "class." For example a sentence, "The other team are all sitting down" is incorrect, according to American grammar rules. However, the same sentence, though somewhat outdated in modern British English, is still acceptable.

Use a delexical verb "take" instead of "have." A delexical verb is used in contexts where it has little meaning in itself but occurs with an object noun that describes an action. For example, say "I'd like to take a bath" instead of "I'd like to have a bath," as many British persons would say.

Learn American variants of past tense forms of irregular verbs, which are different from some verbs from British English variants. For example, Americans spell "burned," "gotten," "learned" and "spilled" instead of British English "burnt," "got," :"learnt" and "spilt."