English Grammar - Free lessons - Learn English Online (2024)

English Grammar reference

Here are how-to guides for every type of word you'll find when you learn English grammar. Check out the dedicated categories:

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Here are our five best tips for learning English grammar easily.

Don’t get obsessed with it. Try to spend only 20 - 25% of your study time on grammar, and the rest on getting exposure to the language in other ways. Reading, listening, writing and speaking are all far more natural ways to interact with English: grammar is just the glue that holds everything together!

Keep a notebook where you write down verb conjugation charts and grammar rules as you come across them. This will help you keep track of what you have learned, will help new rules “stick” in your brain more easily than online learning.

Learn the words that trigger each tense and rule -- for instance, “yesterday...” often opens a sentence in the simple past tense, where “whilst I was…” often signals the past conditional tense. Learning some example sentences is very helpful.

Resolve any doubts as soon as you come across them. There is plenty of help available online. You can ask English tutors for free advice on Preply’s Q&A forum!

Practice using English grammar as soon as you can by forming sentences yourself. The most efficient way is to start speaking, but don’t underestimate the power of writing in English too! Follow all five of these steps, and you will see progress in your understanding of English grammar in the shortest time possible.

In short: yes, it is possible to learn English without studying grammar -- and some people do. But as long as you don’t obsess over the rules, dipping into grammar can help you make sense of English faster.

In the bad old days, grammar was the primary focus of all European language teaching. In response to that, there is now a trend in ESL teaching that says “don’t bother with grammar at all!”

After all, in almost every language, native speakers don’t learn the grammar until they are already fluent, if ever. They just speak, listen, and speak until their sentences start to feel right. Dedicating a significant amount of your study time to grammar can be discouraging (especially for a language as illogical as English) and doesn’t help you practice using the language.

However, many learners find that studying the rules takes the mystery out of English, and helps it feel logical. This is especially true when you reach an intermediate level! The best advice is probably to take grammar in small doses. Read, speak, hear and write some English, and when you start noticing patterns, look up the rules you see in use. If you have already understood some examples of a particular rule in action, learning about the grammar will probably be a moment of “aha! I get it!” rather than a long and boring trudge through theory.