When someone starts learning English, the biggest question in their mind is:
“How much grammar do I need to learn? And how many words (vocabulary) do I need to know?”
In this article, we will talk about how much grammar is needed to learn English.
Do I need to learn all the grammar rules to speak English? Or are there some specific topics that are enough?
If we can understand this clearly, learning English will become easy and fun.
First, we need to ask ourselves: What do I want to learn?
Do I want to become an English expert, or do I just want to speak the English language?
If I want to be an expert, then yes, I need to learn everything.
But if I want to talk in English in real life, I don’t need to learn all the grammar rules.
That doesn’t mean grammar is not needed at all.
It means we only need to learn the basic grammar that helps us speak English.
Some people say, “We didn’t learn grammar to speak our mother tongue.”
That’s not completely true.
Let’s remember how we learned our mother tongue.
First, we learned one or two words like “Ma”, “Baba”.
Then we listened to people around us, and slowly our word bank grew.
We didn’t learn grammar consciously, but our brain learned it unconsciously.
We listened, watched, and copied people. That’s how we learned how to make full sentences.
So, a baby actually learns grammar too — not by books, but by hearing others.
This means: we did learn grammar, but without knowing it.
So now, what’s the difference between a child learning a language and us learning English now?
A child learns naturally and without effort.
But when we learn a new language (like English), we learn it consciously — we read grammar rules and try to apply them.
So, yes — to learn a new language (not your mother tongue),
you need to learn some basic grammar rules.
If you ask, “Can I learn English without grammar at all?”
My answer is: Yes, you can, but it will be very hard and slow.
You must memorize a lot, and it will take a long time to speak well.
Now, let’s see what grammar topics you really need to learn:
✅ Sentence (Types and Structure):
Learn how to make full English sentences. How to start, how to end, and different types of sentences.
✅ Tense:
Tense means time of the action – past, present, or future.
Tense helps us tell when something happened or is happening.
✅ Articles (a, an, the):
We use articles to point out or specify something — like “a pen” or “the sun”.
✅ Parts of Speech:
These are the different kinds of words in a sentence — like noun, verb, adjective, etc.
You’ll learn how and when to use them.
If you learn these 4 grammar parts well, and if you know a good number of English words,
then you will be able to speak in English in most situations.
But remember, the most important thing is practice.
Here is the smart order to learn English:
- First, learn basic vocabulary (common English words).
- Then, learn these basic grammar rules.
- And finally — and most importantly — practice a lot.
You may ask, “Why learn grammar first if practice is most important?”
Because grammar will help you practice correctly from the beginning.
You won’t keep making the same mistakes again and again.
You will learn faster and better.