Natural Grammar: The key words of English and how they work [Paperback]

Natural Grammar, by Scott Thornbury. Oxford University Press 2004. Reviewed by Rory Braddell

There are quite a lot of differences among EFL teachers regarding how best to teach grammar. Some teachers would probably follow the traditional idea of a prescriptive grammar, presenting rules and structures of language that define so-called good and bad usage. Natural Grammar, however, struck me as something entirely new in the EFL repertoire, as it is designed to make students and teachers think about new ways to analyse grammatical structure according to a functional approach. This is achieved by focusing on the actual patterns of use of normal speech, in which grammar emerges from the lexis of words, rather than being broken into little pieces that are defined by terminology. Grammar is presented in this book as language made up of lexical chunks of meaning, which are shown to be part of a dynamic process of communication. In his previous books Scott Thornbury has also made a convincing case for a concept of grammar as an emerging process, in which the learner uncovers grammatical structures that are not removed from essential patterns of the spoken language. The innovation of Natural Grammar was acknowledged by the British Council who awarded the book the third prize in the prestigious Elton Awards of 2004.

The book is made up of one hundred pages of double-page spreads, which each feature one of the 100 most used words in the English language starting with "a" and running through to "you". On the left-hand pages you will find presentations of the individual words, which are each divided into four sections: definition, grammar patterns, collocations and set phrases. There are copious examples of combinations, which are drawn from corpus examples of the most common English usage. On the right-hand pages you will find varied practice exercises to further enhance awareness of contextual examples. To quote the introduction, the book is "about grammar, but it is organised around words." The concept is that grammar is not the main organisational principle of language, but should be treated as an extension of lexical construction. All these high frequency words are contained within and covered by grammar itself, and if you learn them, along with all their lexical combinations, you are getting traditional grammar for free without even mentioning terminology. Thornbury does not completely discard traditional ways of describing grammar patterns, and in addition to supplying contextual examples, he uses descriptions of parts of language to illustrate how elements interact. For example he shows how "get + noun phrase" can be used to talk about obtaining something and "get + adjective" can be used to talk about change. There are, however, none of the usual headings like "Present Perfect", and instead these themes are presented in relation to contextual combinations of keywords. For example, the pages that present the keywords "have", "just" and "never" should give the reader a good understanding of the Present Perfect tense. Likewise, the keyword "if" brings about a thorough examination of different forms of conditional sentences, without even mentioning grammar-jargon terms such as "second/third conditional".

I think that the advantage of this book is that it deals with a lot of common grammar constructions, which are often omitted by prescriptive grammar books that tend to tell people how to talk (production), rather than studying the way they talk (process). Another interesting aspect is that colloquial forms of language, such as the combination "get + to-infinitive" to talk about achieving something in "did you get to see the ruins" and "it gets me" to indicate annoyance, which are sometimes ignored by established EFL materials, are well covered in this book. The only criticism I have is there is little or no advice for teachers and students on how to use the book in the introduction, and due to the extensive content, I feel that it would only suit a higher level student. I am wondering if one of my students would know where to start in this book, as it does not present grammar as part of a syllabus that can be learned incrementally and at best can only be used as a reference book to compliment an established system.

April 2005, Rory Braddell

This book is based on the British national "corpus," a database of about 300 million words from various written and audio sources. Statistical analyses of the corpus have revealed the most common words and word-groups in English. Instead of presenting traditional chapters with organized grammar structures (to be, to have, etc.) this book presents 100 of the most common words and the word-groups they appear in most frequently, starting with a/an and ending with you.

The approach is refreshing (the book won an award for innovation in English language teaching), and it is well thought out. For example, the various uses of words like "just" are explained simply and clearly. One disappointment is that this natural approach would seem to be best for beginners, but the book is designed for intermediate and advanced students. Another problem is the choice of listing the words in alphabetical order. That makes it easy to look for words, but offers no rationale for choosing any other order (e.g. the most common words first?).

There are also exercises with an answer key, and some amusing examples of British usage, e.g. "too clever by half," which means pretentious. Students who have already waded through a traditional textbook of elementary English grammar will probably find this book a pleasing change of pace, and my first experiences in using this book with advanced students have been positive. Highly recommended!