bad means not good, bad means not good. You’d probably translate it to your own language. And then
after lots and lots and lots of time, maybe you would remember it.
Well using our system, you do something very different. You would write down that whole phrase. He
was a bad dog. That’s actually a full sentence. Or you could just write down was a bad dog or he was a
bad dog, whatever. And then every single time you study or review, you would always, always, always
study the full complete phrase. You would never just study that word, bad. You would study the whole
thing.
Now by doing that you’re getting free grammar. How do you know? Well, because first of all you’re
getting that verb, was, right? Was, and that’s just going to stick in your brain, he was, he was, he was.
You’re also learning articles. You don’t need to remember what that means. You don’t have to even
worry about it. And yet you know that it’s correct to say, in this situation, a bad dog. He was a bad dog.
Some people say a, he was a bad dog. Both pronunciations are correct. So he was a bad dog. He was
a bad dog.
A lot of students have problems. When do I use a, or a? When do I not? When do I use the? And
you’re trying to memorize all these super complicated rules and situations for it. Forget that. It’s too
complicated. You’ll never remember it. Just study phrases and you’ll start to feel when to use it, when
it’s correct, when it sounds correct and when it sounds strange, when it’s not correct to use those things.
And, of course, this is true for all grammar; all phrases; all vocabulary. By studying a full phrase or even
a full sentence, always, always, always, you’re going to get lots of grammar. You’re going to learn which
vocabulary words go together naturally. And you’re going to know when to use them in which situations.
Because sometimes, for example, there might be a situation where there are many words that mean the
same thing. And yet we typically use one of them.
Like, we might say he was a bad dog. That’s a common phrase, a bad dog, bad dog. We use that word
bad to describe a dog who’s naughty, who’s not good. But we don’t usually say horrendous. Now
horrendous means super super bad, really terrible. And yet we don’t usually say he was a horrendous
dog. It sounds strange, even though the meaning is basically correct. Yet, in normal real English, not
textbooks, but real English, we just don’t use that word to describe dogs, not usually. I don’t know why.
There’s no real rule about it. It’s just that’s what we usually do. And every language has these kind of
word combinations that are more common, and other word combinations which just aren’t used typically.
How do you learn that? Well you can’t learn it from any rules because there are no rules about that. You
have to learn it by studying phrases always. Always, always, always study phrases. Review phrases.
Whenever you learn a new word don’t just write down that individual word. Write down the full phrase, or
even better, the full sentence that it’s in. Always include the words that are around it. This is going to
help you improve your English speaking ability much, much, much faster.