Job Discussion Forums

[extranjera]

HI All,

I am a newbie, will be teaching in Peru soon (hopefully) or other Latin American country.

I was wondering if you can recommend a small, lightweight, easy to use English grammar book?

I'm not 100% sure I even need one to teach ESL, but I suppose it would be good to have one in case I have to get technical, even though I am a native speaker.

I would like to get one before I go to Peru, because I'm sure the shipping will be more expensive. If you can recommend one that has helped you, and why, that would be great.

Thank you!!!!!!!!

[Glenski]

It's not small or lightweight, but it is considered nearly indispensable.

Practical English Usage
by Michael Swan

[Denizen]

If you're bringing a laptop or even a smartphone, you may want to consider some in pdf format for ease of use. There's one from the National Adult Literacy Database that's free. There are others, I'm sure, accessible by using your friendly search engine.

English Grammar for Dummies might be a light choice, though I certainly wouldn't flash the cover to any prospective students!

[nickpellatt]

I wouldnt recommend any grammar book to be honest, and definitely not Swan. For newbie teachers, with minimal grammar knowledge, they just arent accessible, or sometimes even relevant! Thats been my experience during my Trinity training course, and in the classroom after.

If you want to invest in books (and a PDF format/ebook etc would be better for weight and space) invest in some coursebooks. They present grammar points and target language in context, with exercises, tasks, activities and rules designed for non-native speakers. It is this form of presentation that makes them both accessible, and useful, as what you read in the book, can be directly transferred to the classroom!

[fluffyhamster]

The problem with Swan is that the A-Z format, whilst good for quick access, doesn't lend itself to a linear read-through and therefore won't be able to teach you grammar in much of a sequential-progressive sense (although Swan does provide a glossary of grammar terms), so your ease of use could be slightly hampered if you have little or no prior background in grammar. I'd therefore recommend - as in fact Swan himself does in the frontmatter of his PEU 2nd edtion at least - that you get more a "grammar proper", such as Eastwood's Oxford Guide to English Grammar (recommended by Swan), or perhaps (if you're feeling a little more adventurous!) the Collins COBUILD English Grammar (both take a word- to discourse-level approach, but the COBUILD is very valuable for its "lexicogrammar" way of thinking, which at a practical level provides lists of words that share the same structures and thus meanings. It also draws on some interesting concepts, for example, the concept of verbs in "phase" [as used in Systemic-Functional Grammar apparently], which can help clarify whatever difference there may be between verbs when they appear in such structures and when they are used in a more straightforward transitive SVO sense e.g. I want [him] to go versus I want a new car). You can find out more about all these books, what's in them and more by searching my other posts here on the Job Discussion and also the Teacher Discussion forums.

Dictionaries of grammar can also be very useful. The two that I swear by (that complement each other very well, and that would make a very portable pair) are Chalker & Weiner's Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar and Trask's Penguin Dictionary of English Grammar, though Pearce's Routledge Dictionary of English Language Studies also comes in handy sometimes and ranges sociolinguistically-speaking well beyond grammar (so it's a bit like a mini encylopedia, not that it can ultimately really rival e.g. Crystal's encyclopedia, or McArthur's companion). Again, do a search if you want to get a better idea of what all these books provide.

And if you have a bit of extra time and money before departing, you could try an actual course in grammar such as Leech et al's English Grammar for Today (this was a set first-year-English text at my uni when I was an undergrad) - it could even equip you enough that you wouldn't need to worry about lugging a reference grammar around too much.

Last thought, bear in mind that dictionaries contain a lot of grammatical/structural information in a very assimilable format - see for example the codes in the Oxford or COBUILD advanced learner dictionaries (these two have more explicit and IMHO therefore helpful coding than the competing works from Longman, Cambridge, or Macmillan). All these dictionaries are available in book+CD-ROM packs, and COBUILD do a CD-ROM (Collins COBUILD on CD-ROM/Collins COBUILD Resource Pack) that contains a ton of stuff: the Grammar, Dictionary, Thesaurus, Usage Guide, and Wordbanks. Some reviews and links to online (but somewhat limited) versions here: http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?t=65876

[rtm]

Personally, I like The Grammar Book by Marianne Celce-Murcia and Diane Larsen-Freeman, as it's designed specifically for ESL/EFL teachers.

[fluffyhamster]

Hi Rtm. I agree that The Grammar Book is pretty good (despite what the single, one-star review on Amazon.co.uk says!), very useful for its insights from Discourse Analysis especially, but it might be a bit too big and heavy (and expensive?) for the OP's purposes, and can be quite in-depth/"too detailed" at times. (One thing I think it could really do without is the phrase-structure rules!). Best thing then I guess would be for the OP to 'Look Inside' it on Amazon.com (and one can also get some idea of its contents from the following post: http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?p=769463#769463 ).

Hmm, one book that hasn't been mentioned yet is good old Murphy (his Grammar in Use series), but as I'm always saying, whilst that may be good to get a quick student's-eye view, it is a bit lacking in depth (and dare I say formal terminology).

[Dedicated]

You could try " How English Works" by Michael Swan and Catherine Walter (publisher Oxford Univ. Press)

I find this makes grammar practice interesting. The rules are easy to understand and remember ; exercises entertain as well as teach.

[Glenski]

[extranjera]

[extranjera]

[/quote]But if you don't know basic Spanish you wouldn't have known that.
[/quote]

Hmm... Well let's see, was my grammar in the above sentence correct? I might have spoken too soon about knowing my grammar very well!

I am an American, so keep in mind how casual we are! I guess that's my excuse if I'm wrong!

[fluffyhamster]

Hi Glenski. I think the operative word was 'newbie', and I did go on to say (immediately following the partial bit you quoted) 'so your ease of use could be slightly hampered if you have little or no prior background in grammar'. (And if my assumption there proves correct, how could Extranjera not be taught/learn grammar [however indirectly or roundabout] by Swan?). Edit: I see Extranjera's responded!

[fluffyhamster]

Hi Extranjera. Hmm, it's actually at the lower levels that you'll be teaching grammar ("teaching" "grammar"), but not in the jargon-strewn sense (though there are obviously basics, like the 'parts of speech', that students will need to know), but rather in sort of "system-building", "consistent-meaning" senses (for which good examples, useful in context A versus B versus C etc, will be the main thing driving the learning). At higher levels the grammar/grammar-based/form-focussed teaching may start to fall away as the language (English - less translation needed now!) speaks even more for itself and communication becomes paramount and easier, but a sprinkling of grammar terms every now and then can still provide a convenient shorthand for clearing points up. (A lot depends of course on the utility of the terms, and there are some that are less well-known than they perhaps ought to be, and may therefore need to be sought out in more specialized books a bit later into one's career perhaps - for example, the concept of 'remoteness' as "popularly" expounded by Michael Lewis [there has been some discussion on the forums], particularly in his The English Verb. Another writer that I keep returning to is Peter Master, who tries to convey all the complexities of the English article system as ultimately "binary", involving just a binary choice).

By the way, what exactly is "past present subjunctive"?!

[extranjera]

[Isla Guapa]