A Book Review: A Practical English Grammar

A Practical English Grammar is a textbook intended for intermediate and post-intermediate students. Also, more advanced learners and teachers will also find it useful.

The book is a comprehensive survey of structures and forms, written in clear modem English and illustrated with numerous examples. Areas of particular difficulty have been given special attention. Differences between conversational usage and strict grammatical forms are shown but the emphasis is on conversational forms.

In the fourth edition the main changes are as follows:

1 Explanations and examples have been brought up to date.

2 There is now more information on countable and uncountable nouns, attributive and predicative adjectives, adverbs of place, sentence adverbs, cleft sentences, prepositions, conjunctions, modal verbs, perfect tenses, infinitive constructions, the passive purpose clauses and noun clauses.

3 Some material has been rearranged to make comparisons easier. For example, parts of chapters on can, may, must etc. are now grouped by function; verbs of liking and preference have a chapter to themselves; suggestions and invitations have joined the chapter on commands, requests and advice.

4 The contents list new summarises every section heading, and there is a new index containing many more entries and references.

In this edition the sign ‘∼’ is frequently used to denote a change of speaker in examples of dialogue. Note also that although the sign ‘=‘ sometimes connects two words or expressions with the same meaning, it is often used more freely, e.g. to indicate a transformation from active to passive or direct to indirect speech.

 

What is more interesting is that the textbook of grammar has two exercises books. This helps the students and learners enhance their knowledge and challenge their competence.