English Grammar Workbook For Dummies doesn’t concentrate on what we English teachers (yes, I confess I am one) call descriptive grammar — the kind where you circle all the nouns and draw little triangles around the prepositions. A closely guarded English-teacher secret is that you don’t need to know any of that terminology (well, hardly any) to master grammar. Instead, English Grammar Workbook For Dummies concentrates on functional grammar — what goes where in real-life speech and writing.
Each chapter begins with a quick explanation of the rules (don’t smoke, don’t stick your chewing gum on the bedpost, be sure your sentence is complete, and so forth). Okay, I’m kidding about the smoking and the chewing gum, but you get the idea. I start off telling you what’s right and wrong in standard English usage. Next, I provide an example and then hit you with ten or so quick questions. Just to make sure you know that I’m not wasting your time, in every chapter I give you a sample from real-life English (with a fairly absurd situation, just to keep your funny bone tingling), so you can see how proper grammar actually aids communication.
After filling in the blanks, you can check your answers at the end of the chapter. In English Grammar Workbook For Dummies, I also tell you why a particular choice is correct, not just for the sake of learning a set of rules but rather to help you make the right decision the next time — when you’re deciding between their and they’re or went and had gone, for example.
As the author of English Grammar For Dummies (Wiley) and a grammar teacher for more decades than I care to count (let’s just say that I had an inkwell in my first classroom), I believe that if you truly get the logic of grammar — and most rules do rest upon a logical basis — you’ll be a better, more precise communicator.
English Grammar Workbook For Dummies offers a special welcome to readers for whom English is a second language. You’ve probably picked up quite a bit of vocabulary and basic grammar already. English Grammar Workbook For Dummies lets you practice the little things — the best word choice for a particular sentence, the proper way to create a plural, and so forth. This book moves you beyond comprehension to mastery.
Finally, because standardized college entrance exams are now a permanent part of the landscape, I’ve taken special care to provide examples that mirror those horrible tests. If you’re
facing the SAT or the ACT in the near future, don’t despair. Everything the grammar-testing
gurus expect you to know is in this book.
Download
