By Robby
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Hi guys, hello boys and girls and welcome back to Robby’s English Harmony video blog. Now, in today’s video I’m going to tell you about the fact that sometimes what we say to the other person or in my case what I write on my blog or I talk about in my videos sometimes it can be perceived differently, right?
Basically I mean it in one way but the other person or a group of people perceive the message the wrong way. Maybe it’s because of the way I communicate the message or sometimes it just happens, you know.
Miscommunication just happens despite your best efforts to make sure that the message is sent out very straightforward and clear and despite the fact that you’re trying to get rid of all the ambiguity it just happens sometimes, right?
And what exactly I’m talking about here in this video is the fact that sometimes I talk about grammar and how it’s not really necessary, right? But at the same time I’ve always emphasize the fact that you have to self-correct that any intelligent person would not just try and get away with speaking grammatically incorrectly, they would try and to self-correct and over time as you keep correcting yourself – and you may want to click on this link to read more about the self-correction.
Some People Mistakenly Believe I Advocate for Incorrect Speech…
And this is actually a big deal, right? Because a lot of people get in touch with me asking me “Robby, how can I be sure that whatever I say is correct, especially if there’s nobody else around to correct me?” And that kind of ties in with the whole spoken English self-practice concept.
I keep telling my audience that you’ve got to be speaking with yourself so it begs the natural question if I’m speaking with myself who is there to correct me? And my answer is always self-correct! Don’t forget the fact that you have the natural ability to correct your own speech, right? Give yourself more credit than you do, right?
And here’s the link – just like I said, click on it, read about it and that is how you develop the instinct for correct speech and that’s how you improve your English over time, right? And yeah, what I was going to say is that the message that is sent out there, the message that I communicate with my audience by saying that grammar is not really that necessary, don’t think about grammar, forget about grammar, some people think that what I mean is that you have to be careless in the way you speak, that you can speak however you want and you don’t have to pay any attention as to the correctness of your speech, right?
To a certain degree it’s true. You don’t have to be afraid of making mistakes, right? And I suppose this message kind of gets what’s the word – magnified, you know what I mean by the fact that sometimes I say that you don’t have to be afraid of making mistakes so people kind of think “Hold on a second, Robby says that grammar is not necessary. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes. So what it means is you have to make a lot of mistakes. Don’t care about grammar, speak however you want, right?”
But All I’m Saying Is – Ignore The Emotional Effect of Making Mistakes!
That’s not way I mean it guys! And I’m basically recording this video to send out a strong message to you that what I mean by saying that don’t care about grammar and make a lot of mistakes is first of all, you don’t have to be afraid of making mistakes.
It’s going to happen so you have to accept the fact that you’re going to make mistakes no matter what way you approach the whole thing, right? More often than not, if you try not to make a mistake you’ll end up making more of them so you may just embrace the concept that you’re going to make them anyway.
So don’t limit yourself, just go about your speech the way you normally do, right? And what I mean by saying not to care about grammar is that you don’t have to analyze your speech as you speak because that’s what we were taught in the school, in our English class that you’ve got to be creating grammatically sound sentences as you speak but that flies in the face of the whole fluency concept which is all about speech automation. You can’t be analyzing your speech. It can only happen by way of imprinting those speech patterns into your brain, into your mouth and being able to speak automatically and improvise as well, okay?
Self-correction and Constant Feedback is the Way to Go!
So, you don’t have to care about the grammar aspect in that sense. But I’m not saying that you have to keep speaking the way you speak in case you’re making a lot of mistakes. You have to self-correct over time and provided that you’re intelligent enough I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t go down that path, right?
Look at me, I was speaking very, very bad 10 years ago, right? 10-9-8 years ago but then I kept working on my speech especially focusing on the phrases and idioms and all that kind of thing. And over the course of the last 8 years or so a lot of those speech patterns have been imprinted into my brain which makes me speak pretty much without any mistakes.
I’m not saying that I’m not making any mistakes at all, right? All I’m saying is that the number of mistakes have come down drastically and now my speech is more like that of a native English speaker, right? But it’s all because of the self-correction. Constant adjustment, constant feedback. Just speak and then go back to what you said and most likely you will notice when you say something wrong and so you have to look it up later on what way you have to say it correctly.
So this is what I mean by saying that you don’t have to care too much about grammar. Don’t care about it at that particular moment and time, at the moment of speaking but then you kind of have to analyze your speech a little bit after it’s happened and correct it for later use. You know what I mean? The feedback has to be there. You can’t just go about it totally carelessly, thinking that it’s no big deal, right? That’s not really what I meant by saying that.
One Last Time – Ignore Emotions that Come with Mistakes – Not the Mistakes Themselves!
So I just wanted to go on record by saying that you have to care about the correctness of your speech, you have to care about grammar but not in the traditional meaning of the word, right? When traditionally people would say you have to improve your grammar then you would jump right into your grammar studies, read the text books, start filling in gaps and cram the grammar rules and word lists and what not, that’s not going to improve your speech.
It’s going to improve your ability to pass certain tests and what not, but as far as your speech – you’ve got to be speaking grammatically correct speech patterns. If you make a mistake, no big deal. Don’t care about it, don’t care about the grammar and making mistakes at that particular moment in time. But going back after the speech you have to analyze your speech, you have to realize what you’ve said wrong. You have to self-correct, adjust your speech and going forward a few years down the line your speech is going to become way more fluent and way less errors are going to be happening as you speak, right?
So that’s exactly what I mean by saying that. So that’s about it my friends. If you have any questions obviously, feel free to publish them in the comment section below. And chat to you soon. Bye-bye!
Robby
P.S. Would you like to find out why I’m highlighting some of the text in red? Read this article and you’ll learn why it’s so important to learn idiomatic expressions and how it will help you to improve your spoken English!
P.S.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out my English Harmony System HERE!
P.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out the English Harmony System HERE!