Grammar rules are easy to teach and easy to learn

Grammar explains how words are organized in a sentence. When you speak and write, you have to put the words in the right order so that people will understand what you are saying or writing.

Rules make people feel comfortable. Learning rules makes students feel good. Learning grammar rules helps students feel confident that they are learning English.

Grammar rules help you do well on an English test. We feel proud of ourselves when we get a good mark on a test. If we get a good mark on a test, this means we can speak English, right?

Wrong.

Let’s be honest. Learning grammar rules is easier than listening and reading. However, it’s not going to help you speak.
If you want to speak English well, you need to know the correct order of words. You can do this by learning collocations, phrases, and sentences, not by memorizing rules.
Native speakers don’t learn many rules in school.

If you asked a native English speaker to explain what a relative clause is or what a coordinating conjunction is, they would probably say “I don’t know!”

We learn very basic English grammar in school. I am a native English and I speak English fluently, but I had never heard of a gerund or the present perfect tense before I started teaching English. I can communicate very well in English without knowing grammar rules.

           Native speakers don’t learn English by memorizing grammar rules. Native speakers learn how to speak first by listening to everyone around them. At school, they learn how to read and write. Their English continues to improve the more they read and the more they listen to people around them.

I don’t think it’s fair to expect English learners to know grammar rules that native speakers don’t know.