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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Context & Clarity, 22 Dec 2008
I'm not sure if it's just me, but I think this is a great grammar text book. I say that because it has often been out of stock and very slow in being delivered by the various companies I use for books and CDs. Perhaps I'm missing something after all.
A grammar text book should have three things:
1.Have clear explanations with easy to follow contextualised examples
2.Have a good quantity of contextualised practice
3.Have a good, clear and uncomplicated reference section
Of course, there is more to it than that, but these are the minimum requirements. A grammar book needs to be accessible for self-study, whether it's going to be used in the class or not. This is because the explanations and examples should be good and clear enough for the student to use as a reference long beyond the end of the language course in which it is used.
Real English Grammar ticks all of the above and more. It's a general English non-business book aimed at a broad range of Intermediate students, and while the full colour illustrations sometimes suggest it would be more comfortable in a traditional young adult language school, I've used it with much more advanced one-to-one business clients. I've used it with these clients particularly as a refresher for people who are rusty in some areas - I find that going back to a significantly lower level than the client is at, helps them to 'see' where their fossilised mistakes are.
Yes, some of the texts and the layouts could be improved, certainly for corporate clients, but the major advantage it has over it's competitors more than outweighs this. That advantage is context and buckets of it.
There are 71 themed units, at first appearance no different in layout to many other grammar books; in other words, explanation + practice. However, the reality is different. Almost all the units follow the same pattern, two pages of explanation followed be two pages of practice (a few units have one page of each instead). The layout of both the explanations and examples is clear and uncluttered. Many grammar books have tried to pack in so much material that the appearance of the pages, crammed with text, is likely to scare all but the most thick skinned student away.
Equally, there is much more practice than some other grammar books give, but that isn't what gives this book it's edge. At the very beginning of each unit, there is a short passage or dialogue that highlights the use of the grammatical form in question. For example, the unit that introduces the present continuous has a dialogue between several people (an illustration of the dialogue is also given, this gives greater meaning and context, so that the student can concentrate on the grammatical form as opposed to the meaning), which has been written so that several examples of present continuous usage can be given, all forms included; positive, negative and interrogative. These are highlighted in bold so the student can easily pick out the form and see how it works. I think this is a great, really great, idea. Before even getting into any explanation, the student is given some real usage to look at, to kick start the learning process without any academic explanations. On top of this, these texts are reproduced in audio format on the accompanying CD, which gives some great 'real listening' to the student.
The examples page follow the same format too. Each exercise in any unit (typically four or five standard gap-fill and sentence writing exercises) is a 'whole context' exercise, i.e. not ten separate questions as would be expected, but ten questions within the same piece of text, conversation and so on. This not only gives the student some sense of continuity, it also, more importantly, adds accuracy to the questions and therefore the answers. Why? As any teacher will tell you, and most students already know, English, indeed any language, is full of double-meaning words, ambiguities, and grammar rules that are inconsistent. Context such as that in these exercises, gives a better chance that there is one answer and one answer only. This is beyond the fact that a single sentence without context can sometimes be impossible to answer accurately unless the student can read the mind of the person who wrote the question. A good example of this is when trying to work out the difference between 'going to' and the present continuous for the future. The first of these is often used for intentions, whilst the other is often used for plans. Without context how is a student to understand whether a question is referring to an intention or a plan? These questions all come with relevant illustrations that help the student understand what's going on in the text.
At the end of the book there are various tables and simple explanations of lexical terms like noun, preposition and so on, and how they're used; some basic pronunciation and of course the irregular verbs list which is split into useful groups.
I think this book is well worth taking a look at, even if it can sometimes be difficult to find. It is uncluttered and contextualised. It doesn't try to cover too much, and whilst some of the illustrations and subject areas might be considered to be a bit 'youth' or at least 'young adult', it is neither patronising nor pitched in such a way that an older and / or business client would reject it outright as part of a 'refresher' section of a course.
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