A better way to Learn English, the Forest for the Trees

Are you looking for a better way to learn English grammar? Well we have a saying in English that perfectly illustrates this problem. “You can’t see the forest for the trees.” It is an idiom that speaks of a person who is to focused on the minor details of a problem than looking at the Big Picture.

The Big Picture is the situation as a whole. We try to solve one problem at a time – taking a small picture approach – instead of trying to look at the end goal. We are often guilty of this thinking when we look at our approach to learning the English Tenses.

I have been teaching in Poland for the past 10 years now and if I had a nickel for every time someone came to me and said I don’t understand the tenses, I would be rich and retired. They are always asking me for an easy way to learn and use the tenses in English.

We have been programmed by public education and the English Coursebooks and Exercise books that the tenses have to be learned. We name them, we exercise them, and we go in order from one to the next with each unit of each book, and there is always a different tense to focus on. Sometimes we focus on two tenses at the same time and compare them. But in all this we are missing the point. The English grammar tenses are about expressing a context of time. If we are focused on which tense to use, we get lost in translation and cannot communicate what we want to say.

This communication problem comes in two areas.

1. The tenses have been introduced unevenly. We generally learn the Simple and Continuous forms first. We reinforce them year after year before finally introducing the other tense aspects like the Perfect Tenses and Perfect Continuous Tenses.
2. The label of the Tenses takes center stage. We have separated the different forms into the ones we know and the ones we don’t know. Then it sinks into our brains and we convince ourselves that we can’t learn them, we don’t need them, and nobody ever uses them. We have placed a mental barrier around our minds and our learning capacity.

With my first series of Video Explanations on my upcoming YouTube Channel, I aim to right this balance and introduce to people a new paradigm (way of thinking). By taking a Big Picture approach, we weill find an easy way to learn and use the English Grammar Tenses. We will unlock the puzzle and and open the door for better communication in English for all.

Jon

Jon Williams is a graduate of UCLA with a degree in Economics. While doing his undergraduate studies at UCLA, he also tutored microeconomics for other students in the AAP program. After graduation, he went on to become a financial advisor where he learned financial sales and management training. In 2003, he decided to take a gap year, going to teach English in Poland which eventually stretched into 3 years. Upon returning to Los Angeles in 2006, he worked in West Los Angeles for an investment management firm where he spent another 4 years in a financial and investment environment. Ultimately, though, his love for teaching led him to move back to Poland where he founded his business Native 1 English Learning. Now he operates a private teaching practice, posts articles and lessons on his blog, creates online courses, and publishes YouTube video English lessons.