Book of the Month
Grammar for English Language Teachers

Publisher: Cambridge
Author: Martin Parrot
€26.30

ISBN 978-3-12-533731

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If you have a problem with English you can ask a teacher. But who does the teacher ask? For several years now, many teachers have been asking a Parrot. Mr Martin Parrot to be precise, who has written this handy guide for those people teaching English grammar who are not too sure about the subject themselves. Those teachers who are happy teaching the passive, but need to check what a causative passive might be find it comforting to take Mr Parrot off the shelf and refresh their memories. (Causative passives are when you are the indirect agent - e.g. 'I had my car fixed last week'.) This book has won a prestigous English Language award, and it well deserves it

This is not a book that you can drop on your foot without seriously hurting yourself. It is a solid block of 512 pages, and apart from pages which are empty except for section headers, all these pages are serious grammar. The book is divided into sections A-H and each section takes a different type of grammar, from 'Words' (e.g. nouns, adjectives etc) to 'Discourse markers' (e.g. firstly, however, notwithstanding). Each section starts with an overview of the topic and then goes on to describe the grammatical points which a teacher will need when presenting a lesson to the class. There is a very comprehensive description of common errors which students make, though it does not point out that some errors are more common to particular nationalities (e.g. Slavs and Japanese have more trouble with articles). There are no lesson plans here. This book tells you what to teach, not how to teach it. There are some exercises in the text (and an answer key at the back) but these are exercises for the teacher. e.g. 'What are the relative pronouns in this text, and which ones can be omitted?'. There is also a handy six-page index to the main grammar immediately after the chapter headings, which allows readers to look up topics ranging from 'a lot of' to 'zero conditional'.

Who is this book for? It is aimed at teachers, especially those new to their subject, though many older teachers might like to refresh their understanding of some grammatical forms as well. However, for the advanced student who wants to know a bit more about English grammar this is also a very handy book. This is not an easy book to carry in a shoulder bag, but it deserves a place on the shelves in the library of any school which is serious about teaching English.

Verdict: English Grammar overkill for students.
Assessment 9/10


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