Learning english grammar

Hi XJ!
I've been struggling with english grammar lately, i feel like im staying on the same level all the time. Do you have any tips to improve it? My goal is to learn it perfectly, but i just don't know how. My english lessons aren't a solution, because i have got people which are even worse than me so my teacher can't learn me what i want, because i know everything that they learn and the only one thing im doing in my class is just sleeping or doing something on my phone. The biggest problems i've got is a word "have" - present perfect/present perfect continous/past perfect/future perfect/past perfect continous, every tense which has "perfect" in it. Any ideas, tips that english grammar will become intuitial for me by learning at home? I've been trying to learn present perfect for like 2 hours, still can't understand anything even if i've got photocopied book where i have got every tense explained. Couldn't even write this topic w/o looking at my grammar book, still got much of doubts that i wrote too many or not enough "have" word here. I hope you can understand me guys and help me!

I'm guessing he does that and judging by his post he speaks English pretty good already. Actually good point czupa, myself living in the UK for the past 5 years, I can use the 'have' word in basic day to day life without thinking/worrying I'm using it incorrectly, but if you gave me an advanced English test with all the tenses I'd probably fail too. It's not really necessary to know to survive but certainly a spot I can improve too. Good point.

You can speak or chat with english speaking people through the internet it helps a ton, I self taught myself english in a few years just by doing so.

Originally posted by memek

that's the biggest problem for us (polish ppl). we wonder to much which "have" should we use instead of talking basics/ simple english.

your english is at good level because you're communicative. the only advice is to learn new words and idioms. you have to feel comfy with your english without bothering which sentece you should use. thats why some of foreign ppl speak fluently.

or you wanna speak official/ formal english? :D

Originally posted by FuZzy1

I never studied English grammar, learned English from cartoon network and movies. In your case with had/have/has I just use what sounds good to me in the context and for words I don't know to spell I use autocorrect :).

You can try doing exercises around the net to improve your grammar with confusing verbs, like this: http://www.learnenglishfeelgood.com/m/english-verbs-tohave1.html got 10/10 first try ;)

Originally posted by Fantasm

add me i'll help you out

don't listen to rawe he has the same english as my 3 yo brother does

Read books in English. Novels and such, whatever fiction you're interested in. I'm not talking about grammar books. Watch movies/tv series in English without subtitles on.

I'm going to suggest things that helped me improve my English years back (and helped nurture the love for this language as well)

- IN VIRTUAL LIFE/ PHONES/INTERNET-

1. text less - talk more. (in english, not in your zonal languages)

Jokes apart, this is the worst thing we do now, for everything we have got an emoji. We dont talk, we send an emoji, life has become short, fast. We dont talk, we just virtually express ourself.

When you talk on the phone, you dont see the person in flesh and blood, your hand gestures arent working now.
You know you got a short time, and a minimum number of words to express your thoughts to that person, else he will get bored, distracted.


- IN REAL LIFE -

1. with old friends:
- Don't wave the hand and take a bye. Go meet him/her, try to continue where you left off yesterday.

- Talk with ppl who are better in fluency, constructing sentence, expressing in the language than you. Learning is a continuous process. You wont get it overnight.

- Use less swear words.
Trust me, it's not cool. When we use swear words, a lot of the things we want to say, get suppressed by bad words. For example, you wanted to express something to your guy friends.

"ah fuck, that sucked. ah fuck, that was awesome. ah fuck, that was sick"

Languages like these have spoiled our generation , our thought process, our ability to express something new. For everything, we just have that one word.

Try expressing yourself through newer words, newer adjectives, newer vocabulary. Download word lists from internet. Start reading. Until you have new words to fill your armory with, you won't have enough firepower to deal the havoc.

- ppl may laugh on you the first day when you're trying to start the english culture, let them understand it's not a foreign nation's practice that you are imitating, it's necessity these days, get your small interested group, there is always a group who is interested to follow suite. In anything. That's the rule of the world.

1. new friends:

the biggest problem with us is, we dont come out of our comfort zone - the same old friends, that same old guy, that same old chick. You have to start off conversations with new people, someone you haven't talked before, the best result is fetched if you know someone is pretty less talkative, to open him/her up you have to talk more.

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ability to speak with fluency, ability to express yourself helps.
people will come to you to know your opinion on a certain thing, to get a new light on the subject, because you are different from the horde.

Good luck my friend.

Originally posted by fakan

You can speak or chat with english speaking people through the internet it helps a ton, I self taught myself english in a few years just by doing so.