Grammar for English Language Teachers: With Exercises and a Key [Paperback]

An excellent resource, which all teachers of the English language, EFL or otherwise, should give serious consideration to. Every grammatical point is extensively covered in detail (514 pages) with each area of grammar being explained expansively and broken down in it's component parts, which further outlines specific teaching points such as construction and use.

The format of the book is also excellent with an abundance of clear sub-headings, which include Key Considerations, What Is..., Consolidation Exercises, and Difficulties For Learners sections. The layout is also good and easy on the reader with large sections of text broken up with tables and bullet pointed lists and examples.

Most serious English language teachers will probably own more than one grammar refrence book, while others, such as new teachers, may only own a single book. Either way, and regardless of which category you should fall into, this book should be given serious consdideration to anyone looking to invest in a good quality grammar reference book.

A book for those with already a good grasp of english grammar as the language and order does not aim for the beginner. I give up after a few pages when words were thrown in with no prior explanation. A good book but for the already practising and experienced teacher of grammar.

This is on the recommended reading list for the TEFL Diploma course I am studying and I am finding it raises more questions than it answers.

I found the cursory treatment of the present perfect in little more than a page and a half particularly surprising. Typical "rules of thumb" were dismissively called into question (perhaps fair enough) but this was neither qualified with examples nor better alternatives.

I also found that it varies from the descriptive to the prescriptive, often without explicitly saying so. For example, the use of "might could" instead of "might be able to". I had never heard of "might could", which a colleague explained is used in the southern states of the USA. This local usage was not mentioned in the book and could easily throw non-native teachers (just as it threw me!).

Furthermore, many assertions are qualified with little more than "some people use..." without explaining why or in what circumstances. Or vague assertions like, "We sometimes use had to instead of must" (p129), when in fact to talk about obligation in the past it's impossible to use must. If this was the case it would sound like this 'I must have gone to the police station', which has a completely different modal meaning (a logical deduction) to 'I had to go to the police station'.

It mentions that some native-speaker ways of using grammar could be penalised in exams in some cases but not in others. Cambridge exams like FCE or CAE would expect candidates to use either US or British standards of spelling and grammar, but I feel these distinctions are not made clearly enough in the book.

In other places I feel the descriptions are incomplete and insufficiently thorough. For example, when comparing present perfect continuous with present continuous, no explicit mention is made of the fact that a present perfect continuous action could in fact also be continuing into the future - the person may just be taking a break or not doing the action at this exact moment in time.

"I've been painting the ceiling." vs "I'm painting the ceiling."

Finally, the consolidation practices come to be extremely tedious and repetitive following practically the same formula every time.

I see that a new edition has been recently published, so I sincerely hope that beyond making it more colourful (a small blessing) there has also been a thorough revision of the content.