Job Discussion Forums

[BocaNY]

Hi All

I'll be taking a CELTA course in Aug. I was wondering what to expect from the course. If people could tell me about their experiences with taking CELTA or another course, that would be great. I also want to brush up on my grammar skills and was wondering if anyone can recommend some good books.

Thanks

[Dragonsheart]

The Headway series of books is excellent! - These are great classroom workbooks.
Grammar books by Raymond Murphy are also highly recommended.
These can be downloaded on torrent sites....
Cheers
Richard

[nickpellatt]

Hello

There are a number of threads in this forum relating to CELTA and other course experiences ... I know lots of people scream about using the search facility ... but I find it doesnt always work. If you scroll down through the topics on this page, and probably the next one, you should find lots of useful information.

I know the threads and posts are there ... I have made a number about TEFL courses, and my experience doing one.

[spiral78]

I Hate Headway (matter of personal taste, I guess), but also recommend Murphy's grammar.

[fluffyhamster]

Murphy's more a range for students than teachers - worth becoming familiar with, but it won't answer every question that a serious, studious teacher or keen student might have. So I'd recommend getting a more detailed reference other than or in addition to a Murphy, such as the COBUILD English Grammar (which goes into somewhat greater detail than a CELTA course usually requires, but which will therefore serve well into an ELT career in the longer term). Swan's Practical English Usage is also worth a look, but COBUILD probably lets the facts of English speak more for themselves, and is more functionally-oriented overall.

A good book that provides a crash course in not just grammar but everything from phonemes through to discourse level is Kennedy's Structure and Meaning in English.

Those and more books mentioned on the following thread (some of the books I mention there are definitely a bit too detailed for CELTA level, though):
http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?p=729346#729346

[nickpellatt]

I have been cleaning out my computer, and stumbled across a PDF file about grammar that I downloaded from Daves ESL Cafe.

Its called - A fast track grammar review by Ted Tucker ... I dont know if anyone else has seen this, or knows quite where a link for it may be (MODS??????) but it might be quite good for any newbie (its probably worth me reading it again too!)

If anyone knows it .... it might be worth posting a link, or even having it as a sticky??

[spiral78]

COBUILD is the best - but I still think Murphy's gives a nice easy overview for both potential teachers and casual students

[BocaNY]

Thanks everyone for the refs. Fluffy I read through the link you provide and that just made my head spin (lol). I'll try to explain what am looking for maybe that will narrow things down.

I want a grammar book that is geared towards teachers.
Has clear easy to read language and goes into detail.
A good definition of terms and good examples. (I have some of my moms old student esl books and they don't really give a proper definition).
If it includes other stuff related to the english language even better.
I am american so most likely one that teaches American english v British is best.

When it comes to learning I tend to learn more from just reading, sometimes when someone is trying to explain I don't get it but then when I read the text, which is usually more complicated, I do.

I hope this helps. Again thanks for the advice, I'll look into the books mentioned. What about the book Grammar for Dummies?

[Justin Trullinger]

The Grammar Book, by Diane Larsen-Freeman.

Practical English Usage, by Michael Swan




Justin

(NOt my faves, maybe, but what I think you're looking for...

[fluffyhamster]

Sure, BocaNY, get something like English Grammar for Dummies - it's affordable (especially if you're ordering from Amazon.com) and doesn't look bad. I actually read a couple of books like that too when I was starting out.

But ultimately those sorts of books are targeted at a native-speaker non-ESL/EFL-teaching audience (who may be more concerned about prescriptive shibboleths than actual wider usage - and actual wider usage is obviously a lot harder to describe and organize adequately, especially to or rather for non-native learners!), so you will still have to get a more detailed ESL/EFL/ELT reference grammar at some point.

Like others have said, Murphy is OK for getting a quick overview via useful, generally authentic and reasonably well-contextualized examples (i.e. could be just the sort of thing for you at CELTA level), but something like Swan or better yet COBUILD would provide you with a means of researching things in more breadth if not depth too, in not-too-idiomatic (i.e. generally traditional or at least comprehensible and intutitively-appealing) terms. You can certainly depend on the COBUILD because the examples are numerous, authentic and well-grouped with a view to a more lexical than just grammatical angle (so it is sort of a bridge between a grammar and a dictionary - a 'lexicogrammar', in other words. Some may think that just jargon, but it dovetails nicely with a phraseological/functional view of language, which is certainly - in fact, always has been - in favour in ELT generally; you get the grammatical structures authentically fleshed out with useful vocab, and words with similar meanings tend to share similar grammatical structures...so it's like killing two birds with one stone).

But if you are wary of getting something like COBUILD for fear of it not providing an easy enough entry into grammar, then a course like Leech et al's English Grammar for Today (or the aforementioned Kennedy) might be just what you're looking for (they get quicker to the terminological and analytical point than stuff like English for Dummies, and will mesh better with actual EFL grammars and concerns); Huddleston & Pullum's A Student's Introduction to English Grammar would however in a growing number of people's eyes provide a better/more sophisticated (albeit somewhat more demanding) course in truly more modern grammar than the Leech et al. And if you really want to nail terminology then something like the Chalker & Weiner Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar might be worth considering (but only if the above types of books haven't quite satisfied your needs).

Don't forget either that dictionaries are also good sources of grammar information (links to online versions of recent learner dictionaries are supplied below).

Lastly, you might eventually want to look at books that discuss the verb in more detail (arranged in roughly increasing order of complexity/"unsuitability" for teachers): Lewis' The English Verb, Leech's Meaning and the English Verb (Third edition) (about the most up-to-date and empirical of the three), and Palmer's The English Verb.

Anyway, there are dozens of books you could get (as a search for just 'grammar for...' on Amazon will show), but the above are, believe it or not, some of the clearer and better ones (and I must say that a lot of American publications can be a little idiosyncratic or inauthentic...or quite complex! For example, I like The Grammar Book, but I think it is a bit too daunting a prospect for those perhaps not quite bitten with the grammar bug just yet...plus it is quite big and heavy to lug around. But it does provide a pretty good overview of more practically-oriented English language research, and a reasonable look at discourse factors (something that a lot of (invented) sentence-level grammar books lack)).

Hope these further comments help somewhat.

Here are some links that might be useful (in no particular order):

http://visl.sdu.dk/visl/en/info/engglos.html
http://www.usingenglish.com/glossary.html
http://www.dailygrammar.com/index.shtml (link supplied by Ouyang, on an AL thread)
http://www.onestopenglish.com/section.asp?sectionType=listsummary&catid=58088
http://www.bartleby.com/reference/
http://www.philseflsupport.com/language.htm

http://folk.uio.no/hhasselg/terms.html
http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~radford/PapersPublications/glossary.htm
http://www.beaugrande.com/UPLOADGRAMMARHEADER.htm
http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/department/docs/punctuation/node00.html
http://wals.info/languoid/lect/wals_code_eng

http://www.oup.com/elt/global/products/englishfile/elementary/c_pronunciation/
http://www.onestopenglish.com/section_flash.asp?catid=60030&docid=156649
> Full-screen version >
http://www.onestopenglish.com/upload/public/attachments/37/osephonemicchart.swf
http://www.personal.rdg.ac.uk/~llsroach/encyc.pdf
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~danhall/phonetics/sammy.html
http://www.answers.com/topic/international-phonetic-alphabet

http://www.chambersharrap.co.uk/chambers/features/chref/chref.py/main
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/
http://www.oup.com/elt/catalogue/teachersites/oald7/?cc=global
http://www.ldoceonline.com/

http://www.corpora4learning.net/resources/materials.html
http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/using/index.xml?style=printable

http://www.oup.com/elt/students/?view=student&cc=gb
http://www.cambridge.org/elt/resources/

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5jVgD1_MvoQC&pg=PP1&dq=swan+learner

[tedkarma]

[coledavis]

Swan. Read it, all of it.

[nagel5]

A very rigorous introduction to grammar is Noel Burton Smith's book, 'Analysing Sentences: An Introduction to English Syntax'.

This gives a basic outline of grammar which I found stood me in good stead for the CELTA course, before which I had little knowledge of grammar.

This book is well respected, and on very many first year English language and first year Linguistics reading lists.

I also found Martin Parrot's book very helpful, which I assume is mentioned above ( see http://www.cambridge.org/elt/gelt_1stedition/press/).

Good luck!