It depends what your goal is

If you want to score a high mark on TOEFL, you are right to work hard on NCE. If you want to communicate with your coworkers, or negotiate a bill with a seller, then it is way overdone. The grammar in daily communication is very simple. You can learn it in one day. The mistakes on grammar will be tolerated as long as your comminication is in an ambient context. No coworkers care if you are using a plural or a single noun. As along as you put an exact time to set up proper context, no one cares you are using present tense. No one uses conditional statements in daily life, even you show off to use it, you will be asked to repeat to reaffirm what you intend to say. There are too many ESL coworkers around, if you use some idioms from NCE, you will be asked to explain what you are saying anyway, why you bother using it at the first place?

It doesn't mean you should not study NCE. If you feel confortable about your daily communication, then you do it for fun to see if you can improve yourself.

If you think as long as you master NCE, then you are good at daily communication, you will be wrong. Most of lessons from NCE will not be repeated in your life. The idioms have no real value since you likely talk to another ESL in US anyway. Most of problems I encountered and I saw other people stumbled upon is we do not know the plain word to describe a common household object, or we pronounce it wrong.

所有跟帖： 

• 我来举两个例子，你来对比一下 -马奎- ♂ (394 bytes) () 09/13/2009 postreply 17:54:49

• 好奇问一下，你太太是英语专业出身？ -好学又好问- ♀ (82 bytes) () 09/13/2009 postreply 18:14:04

• 我老婆不是英语专业 -马奎- ♂ (278 bytes) () 09/13/2009 postreply 18:55:16

• 谢谢马奎。。 -好学又好问- ♀ (0 bytes) () 09/13/2009 postreply 18:57:17

• 回复：好奇问一下，你太太是英语专业出身？ -马奎- ♂ (126 bytes) () 09/13/2009 postreply 18:59:48

• what do you want me to judge? -englishreader- ♂ (856 bytes) () 09/13/2009 postreply 18:26:41