6 common grammar myths destroyed/ how native speakers use English

Today I am going to be destroying common language myths especially grammar myths .

I want to divide these myths into three categories so the first category is myths based on history , bad history or bad understanding of language.

 The second category is myths based on misunderstanding the psychology of language. 

The final category is myths based on lies and marketing that is used by people to sell products, sell courses and sell books .

First category 

So let's look at two myths from the first category so these are the myths based on the history of English and the first one is 

Could you tell me the preposition at the end of the sentence?

There are so many students and also teachers who have this idea in their minds "That's wrong to end a sentence in English with a preposition". 

I think it is useful to try to understand where this myth came from and probably came from a guy called Joshua Paul who wrote a book about English usage.

In his book he wrote this " If a phrase seemed hard in English to be turned into Latin , turn it into some other English of the like sentence ."

And this is typical of the attitude of people at the past time. So in the past there were scholars and other educated people who wanted English to be like Latin.

Because Latin  was the language of Education and Scholarly thought and you know it was the language of royalty.

So these people in the past , they tried to kind of taking English and manipulating it  so it would fit into the structure of Latin because the Latin was a perfect language. 

The problem is that English is not like Latin and it doesn't fit into the Latin structure, but in Latin you can not end a sentence with a preposition.

 Hey,  we  probably shouldn't  do the same thing in English and here we are four 400 years later with the same idea in our head. 

This idea has no reason to exist apart from this guy saying this and you will notice this is a common theme. It takes just one person to create this myth. I will explain to you why?

For example 

What did you sit on? this is a common English.

On what did you sit? 

Surely, you could say this but nobody talks like that. If you talk like that, people would think you had some type of problem that you'd learnt English 500 years ago.

So in English it is absolutely necessary sometimes to end a sentence with a preposition. So, please understand that this rule has no basic in reality.

 Next Myth

I have been thinking about phrasal verbs and I have a question, in a work environment as a business company, using phrasal verbs is considered unprofessional.

Now, this is a very similar thing. This is the idea that there are some types of language or some types of grammatical constructions that are formal and other types that are informal.

Again when we look at the history, normally it's just one person saying we shouldn't do this and this one person generates a lot of influence.

 And here we are hundreds of years later with these ideas in our head that we shouldn't do that and we don't even really know why?

For  example

 A lot of people think that we shouldn't use the the passive. They think that the passive is bad where did  get from" THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE" by Strunk and White .

Again it was just a guy who gave his opinion. It is not law. That is not how language works and  it's the same thing with phrasal verbs.

 People have this idea that phrasal verbs are informal and the Latin or single word verbs are more formal.

Now, there is not really any evidence that is true.In fact there are some single words, Latin verbs that have no phrasal verbs equivalent. 

They can't be substituted and the opposite is true that there are some phrasal verbs that have no single word Latin's equivalent . We must use the phrasal verbs. 

This doesn't really answer the question formal and informal so I have this really great research paper which is by Ken Hyland and Kevin Yang.

 They ask the question is academic writing becoming more formal? and what's great about  it is in paper they list 10 things that are considered by some style guides to be informal. 

As you Know  the passive voice and phrasal verbs are not on this list but 10 things include

 For example:

using first person pronouns 
using sentence initial conjunctions 
using sentence  final preposition
listing expressions 
direct question exclamation 

If we look at the general idea of the list, there is one definition for formal versus informal and the definition is basically formal language is specific.Informal language is  vague.

If you understand that concept, you will understand the difference between formal versus informal language .

Formal and informal language isn't really about specific grammatical constructions and specific vocabulary and word order.Formal language is about being specific .

For example 

We should  test boys, girls and ....etc.

 This sentence is informal because we need more details.We need to know exactly what you are listing or what are you testing and so that's why that's considered informal  feature. 

the same thing is first person pronoun . If I am writing a scientific paper , I don't say

 " I tested the liquid."

We need to be more specific about who ?

It may not be I . It might be the team . It might be my research associate  . It might be more specific than that. 
 So this is the difference between formal and informal language 

Second Category 

So let's look at myths from the second category so these are the myths based on the psychology of English and the first one is this:

What is the proper order for phrasal verbs?

turn on the power of the choice?
turn the power of choice on?

Now, some of phrasal verbs , we can separate and some of them we can't separate . 

If we can separate a phrasal verb , it means  that we can put the object of the  verb in the middle between the verb and the preposition .

The question is when do we split? and when do we not split?

There is no right or wrong rule . It is about psychology. It is about kind of processing language.. So the first thing is that 

If the object of the verb is very long, we probably  don't put it in the middle because the distance between the verb and the preposition would be long that we may forget the meaning of the verb.

For example:

turn red switch next to the door which is at the bottom of  stairs on the left of the toilet on.

By the time, you have finished telling me the object of the verb , forgotten this meaning.

So if it is long, should probably, put at the end because it is easier for me to process .

There is another part of psychology, imagine that we have short phrase like for example "the power of choice" . We have two options:

If we bring something at the front or closer to the beginning of the sentence. It is more powerful. we pay more attention to it. we give it more emphasis.

psychologically, when I am processing the sentence if you say  " turn the power of choice on ."

The power of choice is more salient to me. My focus and my emphasis is on the power of choice.

Whereas when I tell you" turn on the power of choice"
my focus is on the processing of the turning on the power of the choice . This is a simple part of psychology .and that is again how English works. 

The next myth  

Which is the right form of future in this situation ?

My parents will not be happy.
My parents are not going to be happy.

Will or Going to , the eternal question of the future? 

Again, this is not a question of right or wrong rule. I don't care about what they wrote in your grammar book. This is not about right or wrong. This is about psychology. 

So, I need to tell you something a little bit kind of crazy about the human brain 

The past definitely happened and the past is real
The future is not real . We don't know what is going to happen? All we can do is making predication for future.

There is something really interesting about human brain which is the past is as just as much imagination as the future.

We think that our memories of the past are so real, perfect and true, but actually they aren't.

Our brain has to recreate and imagine the past just as much as it has to do in the future.

In fact , there has been some research where they were able to convince people that in the past they have committed  crime even though they hadn't. 

That is psychology because our brain can recreate and imagine things that never even happened .

So really here we are living in the present.  Past and the future are just imagination. The some  types of matrix world we create in our mind s and so when we decide when we choose will or going to .. so it is psychology.

Will: is a strong prediction, something which you are quite sure is going to happen.

Going to : is a prediction based on present evidence. It is strongly linked to NOW.It is a present continuous.  

For Example

My parents will not be happy.

I am making a strong predication I'm 100% sure that my parents are not going top be happy .

My parents are not going to be happy about my failing at the exam.

My parents are not going to be happy.

Come here to this moment with me. Let's look at the evidence. Let's look at the exam results.

I know that there are a lot of books talking about the difference being decision now or plans already made versus decision now but if you look at the way that the people use the future tense in English .

 There is no rule. It is all about psychology. So, don't believe what your grammar book tells you?

The final category 

Now the myths about language based on lies and marketing used to sell products. Let's look at this one.

If you can memorize 3000 vocabulary words , you will be fluent but what are those words?

I have to tell you the truth . The truth is you need to know 3000 and 3 words to be fluent 😆😆😆😆😆😆

There is no correlation between how many words you know and your fluency. My favorite example is the  NewZealand Base ball player , Nigel Richards.

 He is the native English speaker lives in New Zealand and he won the French Scrabbke Championships . He memorized the French dictionary.

 He can not speak French. Zero French . There is no relation between size of vocabulary and fluency, why?

Because fluency is a result of practice. You need more than just vocabulary to be fluent. You need to have automatic control of the grammar structure that you can then put vocabulary in .

You need to pronounce the words, in an understandable way. You need to have all these things to be automatic.
That only comes from practice .

But that doesn't mean the entire question is bad because it is good and useful to have vocabulary list that contains highly frequency words because zips law tells us that you know the top kind of 1000 words makes up like 90% of language . 

A good word list is a good starting point and there are a lot of good word lists especially on poor nations websites .

The next myth

When is the best time for a child to start learning English?

Here is the truth. The truth is that the best time for anybody to start learning English was the day they were born.

The second best time is right now  because language ability comes from practice so the more year you have practiced , the more time you have spent with the language , the better you language will be .

  It is a very simple formula but time in years is meaningless. 

For example:

I could study for six years and go to class once a month .
It is not about years . 

It is about how many hours are you spending learning the language and on top of that what type of studying are you doing ?

Because I spent a thousand hours memorizing vocabulary and have zero fluency that would be a bad use of time bad studying, bad pedagogy or bad methodology .

This myth is based on the kind of idea that children are much better at learning languages than adults .

It is just not true.

If you put a child and an adult together and you test them in all the cognitive areas memory, short term memory, long- term memory, working-memory , problem solving all of these thing adults are better than children . 

The reason that children are so such successful at learning language is that they have no choice . Everybody learnt their first language because they need to survive.

As an adult learning a second language, you don't have the same need , you don't have the same pressure . 

It takes a really special adult to devote the time and the energy necessary to learn language to the same level as a child does.

Because adults are busy with other things with such as coffee and Netflix😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆

I want you to realize that It is never too late. Adults can also be fantastic at learning languages .

The question is are you willing to put in the time necessary and I hope you are. Because the rewards of speaking a second language are great.

Well I hope you enjoyed destruction of myths about grammar and language.