Basic English Grammar Made Easy

do you think grammar is just a lot of

boring rules

well think again my friend think

differently because learning english

grammar can be easy and fun

if you think about it correctly let me

help you

change your thinking

[Music]

hi nice to see you again oh and if

you're new my name's keith i run the

website the keith speaking academy and

the youtube channel um english speaking

success

so listen in this fun lesson i'm going

to make grammar easy for you

i'm going to do this first with a short

story an anecdote and then we'll do a

review of the most important parts of

speech including verbs nouns

prepositions adjectives and many many

more

in the end there's a little quiz

to help you review and have a bit of fun

and also don't forget to click the link

below and you can download the pdf

of this lesson

finally if you want to practice your

spoken grammar with a native english

speaker then check out camberly

this is a fantastic platform where you

can find native english speaking

teachers

and improve your speaking skills the

great thing is the teachers come from

lots of backgrounds so you have ielts

and truffle trainers you also have

teachers who have a background in

business filmmaking music even

journalism so you can find somebody to

match your needs

more about that later let's get into it

and start making grammar

easy

i think language is like music

you listen to music and you hear

beautiful sounds you listen to a

language and i hear beautiful sounds

[Music]

with music you have

different names for the notes and the

order they go in

with language you have different names

for the words and the order they go in

and that's it grammar

just describes the language

it's not the actual language

it's just a way of talking about it

now maybe you started to get nervous

about grammar at school when your

teacher began to introduce some names

and labels for things like

the present perfect subjunctive the

possessive determiners the predicate

and then suddenly lots of rules and then

exceptions

and then at the end of the day you felt

that grammar was the same as

headache

and that's very very common you see i

think we need to change things

i think we should start by listening to

the language

loving it and then repeating it

not

starting with the grammar

talking about it

so when learning english i suggest you

listen

you love it

and then you repeat it

and let me tell you a little anecdote

right this is when i was younger i was a

teenager and i began learning to play

the piano

i did it on my own i had a little

keyboard something probably

something like this

yep

of course those days we didn't have apps

but we had something similar

and so i was at home and i was playing

and i was you know practicing teaching

myself

and then after a few weeks

um my friend came along and he's a

musician he played the guitar um and he

said what are you learning so i showed

him like

[Music]

and he said great that's a scale in c

major and i was like a what a scale in c

major

and he said yes i thought that's

interesting and then i played i played

him something i'd learnt

and he said oh an arpeggio

i had no idea and then

[Music]

[Applause]

oh

a blues scale in c minor i had no idea

and he said that's great and what he was

doing he was describing

what i was playing but i had listened

loved it and repeated what's interesting

is that then i began to get curious

about the names and the rules and the

order and it actually started to help me

and i think it's the same with language

right what we should do is start by

listening loving repeating and then get

curious

find out the names the labels the rules

and that can help us and that's exactly

what i did when i learned spanish and

when i learned chinese

i began with the language and

doing it loving it repeating it and then

bit by bit

learning the labels and the rules and i

think that's the way to do it and that's

the way to think about it

so for me grammar always comes second

it's a kind of a way of clarifying um

rather than a basis for learning

with this in mind i offer you this

lesson coming up now basic grammar

i imagine most of you are beyond

beginner level otherwise you wouldn't

really understand me

so use this as a way of kind of

getting clear about the grammar

reviewing it getting curious about the

rules

and use it as something to help you move

along

not as a starting point

great let's get into it

okay so we're going to look at well

eight of the most important parts of

speech right speaking

and these include

verbs

adverbs

nouns

articles adjectives pronouns

prepositions and conjunctions omg

now you may be thinking that's a lot

keith

yes it is but don't worry you don't have

to be stuck in the classroom with me

this is youtube right you can go down to

the description and there's a timestamp

and you can click on the part that is

most interesting or useful for you and

just watch that you don't have to watch

the whole video

you can but you don't have to

okay i'm going to begin with verbs

so what are verbs simply verbs are doing

words they describe actions that we do

right like

drive

spanish roundabout

always fun and games

cook

lose

where's my pen

also they can describe states of being

like be

or seem

okay

the most important thing about verbs is

they can describe actions in the present

in the past and in the future different

tenses

so in the present we can say

i'm cooking a soup

or we can talk about a present habit for

example and say i usually cook on

sundays

and one of the most important things to

remember because we don't really

conjugate verbs in english it's i cook

you cook they cook we cook we all cook

however

he

she and it

cooks

you must add an s

when you're talking about another person

he or she or a thing

it's the dog

so at the s now you're saying of course

i know that keith but when you're

speaking

lots of students at a high level forget

the s

yes he cook a lot no he cooks a lot so

you need to practice a lot

speaking out the s

and the thing is there are three

different pronunciations

there's

is

depending on the word right

she drives

he cooks

he

loses so be careful about the

pronunciation especially when speaking

especially when speaking

only when speaking

now when we talk about the past

verbs can be regular which means they're

all the same or irregular means they a

bit different right now

the regular past you just add e d

but again when you're speaking that can

be three different sounds it can be

depending on the verb

so you may have for example i cooked

yesterday

i washed my face

i wanted to go to the cinema

so be careful on the pronunciation

if it's not regular then it's irregular

and they're all different and you just

have to learn them there are about 200

irregular verbs in english and in my

free pdf you can see the most important

ones for you at a beginner

intermediate level an example might be

drive i drove yesterday

a final interesting thing about verbs is

that they can become a noun very easily

if you add ing right cook

cooking

cooking becomes a noun

i like cooking or cooking is fun

driving is dangerous

it becomes a noun great

that's it let's move on

next up adverbs

now adverbs

tell you

how you do something

right so if you drive

how do you drive i drive quickly

i drive safely they tell me how i do

something so they describe the verb

normally they they're easy to make right

you would take an adjective like quick

and you add l y

quickly

or safe

safely

and normally usually the adverb comes

after

the verb

i drive quickly

i drive safely

if there is a thing

right i read books

then the adverb will come after the

thing or after the object

i read books slowly

now in a similar way to verbs adverbs

can also be regular or irregular

99 of them are regular

phew great but there are a handful maybe

five or six which are irregular

so instead of taking the adjective and

adding l y you have a different word

most common one is

good well

so we don't say i cook goodly

no i cook well

and the others are quite easy because a

lot of them are the same as the

adjective and the adverb like fast fast

hard hard late late

right

i drive fast i play hard i arrived late

so these are quite easy to remember

in addition to talking about how you do

something

we can talk about the time when you do

it and how often you do it

and we use adverbs for this right for

example i drive carefully we said i

always drive carefully always tells us

how often i do it

and that adverb normally goes in between

the subject and the verb the person and

the doing word i

always drive

carefully i always drive my car

i don't let any tom dick or harry drive

my car

the most common adverbs here are a

frequency are sometimes

always rarely hardly ever never

others are things like now and again

from time to time once in a blue moon

meaning

very rarely

when you have more than one word it's

usually called an adverbial

and this can go

either at the beginning

or at the end of the sentence

so you may say well once in a blue moon

um i

drive my wife's car

or i drive my wife's car once in a blue

moon

at the beginning or at the end

a final note is that adverbs actually

can also describe adjectives oh yes how

interesting more about that later

let's move on now to talk about nouns

right next nouns

so nouns are

things

like

piano

pen

book

book

or

people

like friend

teacher

colleague

or places

like classroom

city kitchen

notice if you take things like

friend or city and you actually use the

name like jack and manchester it's still

a noun but we call that a proper noun i

don't know why a proper noun

and if you're writing it it has a

capital letter

but not when you're speaking it

obviously

now the thing about nouns right

is that you can either have one

or

more than one

singular one or plural more than one

three four two three four five six and

so on when you make a noun into a plural

then you know this right you add an s or

an e s

but be careful when speaking because to

make a noun into a plural when speaking

you either add

well there are three sounds right

there's

is

for example

books

cars

boxes

so depending on the

last sound of the noun it will tell you

which sound to make at the end

another important thing about nouns is

that you can count them

a pen

two pens

three pens

so you can count

nouns however you can't count

all nouns some of them are uncountable

things like liquids or powders

for example water you can't count water

or coffee you can't count coffee

grammatically

so what we can do is we can use a trick

to count right we can say

a glass of water

or a cup of coffee

rice you can't count rice

grammatically but you can say a grain of

rice or a bowl of rice

so these are the tricks we use to make

them countable

the most or some of the most common

uncountable nouns that

are probably countable in your language

so can be confusing things like

furniture

information

news advice they're uncountable

so you cannot make a plural you can't

say furnitures

no you have to say furniture you can

save five pieces of furniture

right if you want to make it countable

likewise pieces of advice

some pieces of news

pieces of information if you want to

make them countable

the final thing to mention about nouns

is that

they're not only single words

they can also be several words and that

we would call a noun phrase logical

right noun phrase

now phrases it's interesting to be aware

of this

because when you're listening it will

help you mark the boundaries between the

noun phrase the verb

adjective and other parts of speech

so for example if i say

the pen in my hand is black

the pen in my hand

that's the noun phrase is verb black

so it's a longer phrase

it's useful because when you're

listening

you want to be listening for the verb

and then go back

for example

the woman with blonde hair and glasses

is from london

is from london that's the verb is

everything before then is a noun phrase

the woman with blonde hair and glasses

that's the noun phrase so as you're

listening it's really can really help

your listening comprehension to be aware

that the noun is not just one word it

can be a phrase

okay let's move on

next up i'm going to talk about articles

and three kinds of articles we'll talk

about the first one is

and you'll notice

hopefully when i talked about nouns i

said pen book

but of course we usually say a pen

a blue pen a black pen

a book

if a noun begins with a vowel sound like

elephant or apple

then we say an

and when you're speaking link an

elephant

an apple

and people go napple what's napple no an

apple because you're linking an elephant

do notice

with plurals

like dogs we don't use

a

right i love dogs

i like cats

also with uncountable nouns we don't use

a or

i need information

okay

the second kind is

the

and this is when we

basically

are referring to a specific noun and

it's where you know

which one i mean

right

can you pass me the blue pen

we can see the blue pen we both know

which one i mean

that's when we use the

the third kind is what is called

demonstrative articles

because they kind of demonstrate where

the thing is

this and that

so for example this pen is blue

that pen

is black

this is close that is far

some students ask me what's the distance

when it goes from this to that one meter

two meters

it's not about distance it's about

feeling

right if you say that you're creating

the feeling of distance so it's all

relative

and it's it's not only physical distance

it can be time distance right this story

i'm going to tell you is very

interesting

this story now

that story you told me yesterday was

interesting

that story in the past right okay so

it's also a time distance

singular this

plural these

you have to smile a lot these

singular that

plural those

oh

those

great let's move on

next up adjectives so adjectives can

describe nouns

right

for example we had

a book

an interesting book

notice

the ah

from book becomes an because of the

adjective beginning with a vowel sound

an interesting book

actually it's an exciting book

um

a delicious chocolate

hmm

a refreshing drink

um it's the great thing about youtube

teaching

you can stuff yourself with chocolates

in the classroom

and notice the adjective comes before

the noun

a refreshing drink a refreshing drink

when learning adjectives i think it's

also a very good idea to learn the

antonyms at the same time

so an antonym

is a word with the opposite

meaning

for example big small

when you learn big learn small

when you learn

thick

a thick book

a thin book

learn the antonyms

great and we can also use adverbs to

describe adjectives

adverbs like really absolutely totally

completely okay for example

this is an exciting book

this is a really exciting book

oh

that

was an absolutely delicious chocolate

great let's move on

so thank you for watching so far um i

thought we should have a break maybe

have a refreshing drink because you've

been seeing so much new grammar now then

knowing grammar is one thing but what

happens when you speak

sometimes you forget you make mistakes

and that is absolutely normal it's fine

it's part of the learning process right

now the thing is i

always suggest start listening

then loving and then repeating

and then you can start reviewing the

grammar like in this video and

practicing more

practicing is great you can practice on

your own you can also practice with

somebody else and if you can get

feedback on your speaking

even better

a great place to do that i think is

cambly

cambly is an online platform where you

can find native english speaking

teachers who can help you with your

english

it's great right you can choose the

teacher that you want to match your

needs

you can decide on the time and you can

find cambly tutors 24 7 around the clock

you choose the content of your class and

you can also watch the recording so you

can review there are lots of packages

available you can find one to suit you

and because cambly are sponsoring this

video thank you kimberly then there are

discounts for you

first of all if you're a first time user

you can get a 50 minute free lesson

which is great to find out if cambly is

right for you and then if you get a 12

month plan you can get a 40

discount

12 months is great because it's a long

term investment in your english and

improving your english language

that's it cambly you can check out the

link below below the video um it will

take you to the website find out if it's

right for you and then start practicing

with cambly

great we're gonna go back now

to the refreshing drink and a bit more

grammar

next let's talk about pronouns

as you can probably guess they replace

nouns remember people places things

and also they replace noun phrases do

you remember the woman with blonde hair

and glasses

the noun phrase

we use them

really to avoid repetition

right because you could say your car is

lovely she likes your car

but it's a bit repetitious

it would be better to say your car is

lovely she likes it

there are different kinds of pronouns

first of all subject pronouns where the

pronoun replaces the noun that is a

subject for example jack is a subject

jack ate the chocolate

the pronoun would be he ate the

chocolate the other pronouns

i ate the chocolate

it was mine

you ate the chocolate

he she it ate the chocolate or we

ate the chocolate you plural ate the

chocolate all of you or they ate the

chocolate

secondly we've got object pronouns and

this is where the pronoun replaces a

noun that is an object for example she

likes keith keith is the object of her

liking she likes keith pronoun for keith

is she likes him

or she likes me

the other pronouns she likes you

she likes him she likes her she likes it

she likes us

she likes you

all of you she likes them

object pronouns

thirdly we've got possessive pronouns

and this is where the pronoun

is is a possession for example

my hat

right

my we can replace or my hat we replace

with it's mine

your hat it's yours

his hat

it's his

her hat it's hers

our hat it's ours

their hat it's theirs

notice of course

with

it's mine

there is no noun because you're

replacing the noun with the possessive

pronoun

great let's move on

next we're going to talk about

prepositions my oh my

now prepositions are challenging because

often they don't translate the same into

your language and we use them

differently

so if you translate word for word you're

probably going to make lots of mistakes

with prepositions

much more useful is to try and

get the feeling of the preposition and

what native speakers

feel it represents or it means

i'm going to try and do that with you

today with three prepositions i'm not

going to give you a big list of

prepositions and a list of all the

different uses

that would be a waste of time you

wouldn't use it you wouldn't follow it

it wouldn't help you

let's just try and zone in on three

prepositions and give you a bit of a

feeling of how we use them i've chosen

at on

in

because i think these are three of the

most important and most challenging ones

and also they are quite closely

connected

so let's have a go wish me luck i wish

you luck

at

is used that the feeling of a specific

point a specific place or time right

i live at 221 baker street really

it's a specific point right a specific

house

i get up at six o'clock in the morning a

specific time

also at has the idea if you like of a

space or a bubble

if you imagine um

for example i'm at home

the idea of a feeling of a bubble or a

space that you're in that bubble so at

home you don't know if i'm in the

kitchen in the bathroom

in the study in the lounge

but i'm in that bubble right i'm at home

likewise at work

but you don't know exactly if i'm at my

desk in the toilet in the office

at the beach

right am i on the sand in the water

in the coffee bar

at the beach

um at the cinema at the shops idea of a

bubble right

next

on

on

can represent more

well kind of touching a surface

or a platform

generally speaking talking about places

right

on the table the cup is on the table

it's a surface

on the wall there's a picture on the

wall

um

on baker street i live on baker street

you're on

the surface of the street

platforms well i'm on the internet

i'm on the phone i'm on facebook

they're all kind of platforms that

you're on

time

on monday

days of the week on monday on tuesday on

the 5th of january which is also a day

so again it's the idea of being

on a kind of a platform if you think of

all the days of the month as a platform

you're on one day i'm on monday i

i'm not on monday

i work on monday i don't work on sunday

next in in has the idea of being

contained in a container like in a box

clear right

in manchester think of the city as a

container you're inside i'm in

manchester i'm in the car get in the car

okay

with time

in july

in august so think of the the month

um there's a number of days and you're

contained in that so in july could be

one day in the month

in summer

idea of contained in the in the season

and also in 2021

right um the idea of being

in the year there are many different

parts of the year or months of the year

so

at on in there is a connection between

them and i'd like to show it like this

being at being very specific on being

bigger and in being even bigger let me

show you some examples right

at six o'clock

very specific

on monday

bigger in july

bigger

he lives at 221 baker street at very

specific he lives on baker street bigger

he lives in london even bigger at on

in

think of it like that

i hope this helps you

get a bit of a feeling

for the different prepositions i should

do a whole video about prepositions and

the feelings

let me work on that for now let's move

on

last but not least conjunctions

conjunctions are words like and or

but

so because

and these are words we use to join

other words phrases and even clauses

they're very very useful and they

actually as you use them they help you

build up longer sentences which helps

build your fluency

for example right we could say he eats a

lot

he is fat

two

sentences two clauses

um we can use a conjunction

different ones to connect them right he

eats a lot so he is fat

he eats a lot because he is fat

he eats a lot

and he is fat

you see there are different

possibilities the good thing to know as

a beginner is that in spoken english we

mostly use very simple conjunctions

there are more complex ones you can

learn as you go on but if you can master

using the basic simple ones

these are what we normally use when

we're speaking

but as i said

practice building up

your

sentences using conjunctions

and that really gives you more complex

sentences if you're studying for ielts

you'll know complex grammar is very

important this is a great first step to

mastering just joining your clauses

together

over a longer sentence

excellent that's it

let's see how well you have learnt

we're going to move on to a little quiz

right in this quiz we've got five quick

fire questions you need to say if the

phrase is grammatically correct or

incorrect

um and then think about why

if you like you can put your answers in

the comments below let's do question

number one

i think cook is fun

it's incorrect right because cook is a

verb but here

it's the subject of the sentence it must

be a noun i think cooking is fun

question number two

i read slowly books

it's incorrect right it should be i read

books slowly the adverb comes after the

verb but if there's an object a direct

object books

then the adverb comes after the object i

read books slowly

number three

i bought three furnitures

it's incorrect again because furnitures

is an uncountable noun you cannot count

it or them

you must say i bought three pieces of

furniture

number four

i love cats

yes it's correct well done cats as a

plural does not take a or an

or the

i love cats

final question number five

the hat is mine hat

right it's incorrect okay it should be

that hat is mine

because mine is the possessive pronoun

replacing hat so you don't need to say

hat again

right great

well done how did you do how many did

you get correct tell me in the comments

down below and also tell me about any

other

grammar that you find difficult or

challenging

and i can make a video about that in the

future

so listen if you've enjoyed this video

please do subscribe and turn on the

notifications

i hope this can has made grammar a

little bit easier for you um especially

the basic grammar to give you a basic

understanding remember my philosophy

listen to english

love it

repeat it

and then practice as well and of course

if you want to practice go and check out

cambly where you can practice with

native english speakers

choosing the teacher of your choice

if you want to try it you can do a 15

minute class for free

and then you can if you choose a 12

month package you can get a 40

discount just use the code new keith

when you sign up

that's it great most of all have fun

when you're studying and learning and

growing into

a more confident english speaker

and i look forward to seeing you very

very soon

in the next video take care my friend

bye

[Music]