3 Essential Grammar Rules for Spoken English

By Anil|Grammar

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Some believe that better grammar means better spoken English.

That’s mistaken.

Once you know basic grammar such as tenses, prepositions, different forms of verbs, and subject-verb agreement, additional dose of grammar won’t shine your
spoken English further. What you need, instead, is more speaking practice. More inputs – listening and reading.

This post is for beginners who are struggling with even basic grammar and don’t know which part of the grammar to start from to make their spoken English better at
least from the perspective of not making silly grammatically errors such as:

I can eat all five mango.

None of the friends have come to the party.

I meet him during lunch last week.

My friend has already left when I reached the mall.

Such mistakes aren’t uncommon.

Based on a sample of more than 30,000 students from 500+ colleges in India, National Spoken English Skills Report by Aspiring Minds paints quite a poor picture:

…a dismal 25% candidates understand usage of basic grammar constructs, like right use of articles and tenses.
According to the report, lack of grammar skills is the third biggest problem in spoken English after fluency and pronunciation. Only 18.7% candidates have reasonably
good grammar skills.

Grammar plays a far more important role in writing than in speaking, but you must know at least the most commonly used rules in speaking. Here are some:

1. Tense
There are four tenses – simple, continuous, perfect, and perfect continuous. Each of them has present, past, and future forms, resulting in 12 variations in all.

However, in conversations you rarely use more than a handful of these 12. Therefore, to keep it simple and not bog you down with too many variations, I’ll cover only
those which are used the most (probably to the extent of 95+ percent).

1.1 Simple tense

Present

Simple present tense is used to describe a habit or a general truth.

Examples
I walk in the park in the morning. [A habit]

Sun sets in the West. [A general truth]

Past

Simple past tense is used to describe an event that started and finished in the past.
Example
I walked in the park on Sunday evening.
The action of walking started in the past (say at 6 PM, Sunday) and finished too in the past (say 6:30 PM, Sunday).

This tense can be described schematically as:

The red line above depicts the event in the past. The key here is the finish (red dot), which happened in the past.

Future

Simple future tense describes an action you’ll do in future.

Example
I will walk in the park tomorrow evening.
The action of walking will start in future (say at 6 PM, tomorrow) and, obviously, finish too in future (say 6:30 PM, tomorrow).

This tense can be described schematically as:

The red line above depicts the event in future. The key here is the starting point (red dot), which will happen in future.
1.2 Continuous tense
Present

Present continuous tense is used to describe an event that is happening at the moment.

Example
I am walking in the park.
The action of walking is happening right now. In the moment. Not in future. Not in past.

This tense can be described schematically as:

The red dot represents the event happening in the present.

Past

Past continuous tense is used to describe an action that was going on in the past when another event happened. This tense is not used to describe a single action or
event.

Example
I was walking in the park when someone stole my bike from outside the park.
In this example, past continuous tense describes the action of walking that was going on in the past when someone stole the bike (another event).
This tense can be described schematically as:

The red line above represents the action (walking) that was going on in the past when another event (bike stolen) – represented by lightening in red – happened.

1.3 Perfect tense

Present

Present perfect tense describes an action that started in the past, continued in the present, and now finished.

Example
I have walked in the park for 30 minutes.

This tense can be described schematically as:

The red line above represents action starting in the past and finishing in the present. The key here is the finish point (red dot), which happens in the present. If the
finish point was in the past, the correct tense to describe the situation would have been simple past tense (see the schematic representation of simple past tense
above.)
Past

Past perfect tense describes an action you completed in the past before another event took place.

Example
I had walked in the park when the rain arrived.
Here, the action of walking finished before rain, another event, arrived. That’s why the action of walking has been described by past perfect tense and the event (rain)
by simple past tense.

This tense can be described schematically as:

The red line represents the action of walking which happened before the rain arrived (represented by lightening).

1.4 Perfect continuous tense

Present

Present perfect continuous tense describes an action that started in the past and is continuing in the present.

Example
I have been walking in the park for the past 30 minutes.
Here, the action of walking started in the past (30 minutes back) and is still continuing (haven’t stopped walking).
This tense can be described schematically as:

2. Regular and irregular verbs

If you noticed, we used three different forms of the verb ‘walk’ in the section on tenses.

Present form: walk

Past form: walked

Past participle: walked

Other verbs too have three forms, which may follow a pattern different from that of ‘walk’, confusing beginners. If you don’t know the three forms for at least the
common verbs, you can’t make sentences in tenses such as simple past (where you use past form) and all the perfect tenses (where you use past participle form).

Depending on how past and past participle forms are formed from the present form, a verb can be classified as regular or irregular.