Practice Makes Perfect: English Grammar for ESL Learners

I'm tutoring two adults from countries with very different languages. They have been speaking English for many years, but have never had formal classes. Although the students are probably between intermediate and advanced levels, I started with this beginning workbook to pinpoint grammar and pronunciation issues. I supplement with conversation, writing assignments, and various texts and recordings. This may seem a bit backward, as workbooks normally supplement texts and classroom exercises, but it seems to be working. My students can only meet one night a week and have very little time for homework. The compact chapters have just enough explanations, examples, and exercises to determine whether or not more study is needed in a specific area. The organization of the book also helps us focus and follow a path.

I know this will be a good book to add to my collection. I am a newly retired teacher and have volunteered at a local literacy council to teach ESL. Thanks!! cayres

I purchased this book for my ESL learners. I have not used it yet.

English grammar is tough even for native speakers. If a person is doing it himself,this is one of the best ways to work through the info necessary to reach a working level. By that I mean communicating and understanding what comes back at you. The reason adults have a harder time picking up a language is that they (the adults) are afraid of being embarrassed. Children are fearless. This book, if worked through to the end, will install confidence, and that is 90% of the game.

If you have/are a student who needs focused practice with the basics of English grammar, this book is a good choice. It doesn't really focus on usage, context, etc. That's fine, though--its purpose is practice and review. It's particularly useful for beginner/false beginner students who never learned or have forgotten basic grammar terms (transitive verb, etc.). Of course,these terms and rules should NOT be the focus of any modern ESL/EFL course. (Why? Because that's not how people actually learn to use language.) Nonetheless, the rules and terms are useful for discussing grammar problems, explaining the differences between a student's home languages and English, etc. Get this book as a supplement for a comprehensive, communicative textbook such as _Interchange_ or _Out and About_. In terms of design and planning, it has lots of white space and a good balance of questions and explanations. Most other grammar-focused books use explanations that are too wordy and hard to understand, and present text-filled pages that are overwhelming to beginners. As an example, I have a client who is an adult from Japan. He studied English for a year or two in junior high and at a conversation school. Because he had a fair amount of vocabulary and could handle basic conversations ("How are you?" etc.), we started off using an Interchange book. However, I eventually realized that he didn't know terms such as "adjective," which sometimes made it hard for me to explain why a sentence he had written needed to be changed. I picked up this book, and he's really appreciated adding some focused grammar work to our otherwise functional/conversational sessions. We've been following up the grammar work with Mad Libs so that things don't get too boring. He loves the book and uses its nice amount of questions in each section as self-guided homework. As a bonus, this book is quite inexpensive and thus good for private teaching situations or for self-study.