I have problems with grammar.

My grammar is never correct.

I mix up all these tenses.

Sounds familiar?

I need to revise some grammar! This is the most frequent statement I hear when people ask me for advice in preparing for STANAG exams.

And when I ask what they are going to revise, they usually say: tenses!

And what they usually mean by revising grammar is doing grammar exercises from a grammar book.

And this is when I suggest that it might not be as successful as they think.

Revising grammar randomly, or revising all tenses or "all grammar" doesn't make much sense. Why?

Because first of all you need to know which grammatical forms you need to achieve certain goals and fulfil some functions.

You must know in what contexts you will use them.

And then you may practise the form.

That is why, I decided today to give you a short overview of which grammatical forms may be the most useful in the context of STANAG exams in English, especially level 3.

PRESENT SIMPLE

Use Present SImple to

generalise,

give opinions,

agree and disagree,

compare and contrast,

justify.

PRESENT CONTINUOUS

Use Present Continuous to

describe changes,

trends,

future arrangements.

PRESENT PERFECT

Use Present Perfect  to

describe situations which started in the past, but still continue (e.g. tasks which haven't been finished);

describe present results (effects) of past actions.

PAST SIMPLE

Use Past Simple to talk about past events which

happened in a specific time in the past;

happened in the past and cannot be changed;

are finished.

MODALS

Use must and have to describe obligation.

Use should to give advice.

Use need to to describe necessity.

Use may/might to describe possibility.

PASSIVE

Use passive voice to make your statements

formal,

objective and

impersonal.

INDIRECT QUESTIONS

Use indirect questions in writing to formally

ask for information;

ask for advice,

apply for something.

CONDITIONALS

Use first conditional to talk about consequences and effects.

Use second conditional to give advice.

Use third conditional to talk about regrets.

From my point of view, these are the basic grammatical forms you need to master to fulfill speaking and writing tasks of the STANAG 6001 level 3 exam in English.

The list is surely not complete. I must have missed something?!

What would you add? Leave a comment below!

I also wrote about grammar and correctness here: WHAT ABOUT GRAMMAR?

 

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