Most of the grammar rules you’re carrying around don’t affect whether people understand you.

A client once listed what she monitored while speaking: tenses, articles, prepositions, word order and subject–verb agreement. Five rules. Every sentence. All at once. “By the time I’ve checked them all,” she said, “I’ve lost what I wanted to say.”

Very few rules cause real confusion when broken. The rest just create hesitation.

Letting most of them go frees up the mental space to speak.

Quick win: Pick one grammar rule you worry about regularly and ignore it for a week. Notice whether anyone struggles to understand you.

In a Zoom meeting?

Hide self-view.

Why?

Because many people don’t only speak in English.
They also watch themselves speaking in English.

That extra layer adds pressure.

When you stop monitoring your own face all the time, it often gets easier to focus on the conversation.

Have you given it a try?

Before you decide someone is difficult, ask yourself this:

Do they know what effect they are having on you?

Many people do not realise how they come across.
Not because they do not care.
Because they are busy, stressed, fast or focused on something else.

That one question can reduce blame and open the door to a better conversation.

Quick Win:
Before your next hard conversation, replace
“They should know”
with
“Have I actually told them?”

And yes, this one came from a client conversation this morning. Thank you. You know who you are. 

A square dance caller shouts a move. You’ve got about two seconds. Nobody checks a handbook.

I’m a square dancer. Nobody in my group learned the steps by studying them. We learnt by moving – going the wrong way, laughing, turning around and trying again.

That moment in English when someone asks you something and your brain wants to check the grammar first? Same urge. Same pause.

But the caller doesn’t wait. Neither does a conversation.

Your next sentence will teach you more than your next grammar exercise.

Quick win. When you feel that pause coming, step anyway. One wrong move won’t stop the dance.

💬 When did you last keep going – even mid-sentence?

You know that moment when you meet an English word on the page – one you’ve never said out loud — and suddenly you’re guessing at every syllable?

In German, that rarely happens. If you can read it, you can say it.

English has been borrowing words for over a thousand years –French, Latin, Old Norse and plenty more. The spellings often came along for the ride. That’s why ‘tough’ rhymes with ‘tuff’, ‘bough’ rhymes with ‘bow’, and past-tense ‘read’ sounds like ‘red’.

It looks like a mess, but it’s an old mess.

And yes: native speakers guess too. A lot. They just say it, keep talking and adjust later if they need to.

Next time a word throws you, say your best version out loud and move on. That’s how the word starts to stick.

💬 Which English word has tripped you up lately?