Focus On Grammar Helps With Teaching English

By Eli Terry

Focus on Grammar is a very well known textbook series created to teach students English. Irene E. Schoenberg is the author of these books and Pearson Longman is the publisher. This is the 3rd edition of this series and there are 5 levels varying from beginner to experienced.

As the title implies, the books focus on the grammar aspect of understanding English. The lesson are separated into areas about different grammar subjects. In each area of the book students will be taught to read, write, speak, and listen, using exercises that support the major grammar subject. This, certainly, is added to the various grammar activities.

All grammar exercises set out in the books have the same format. This makes it easier to go from one level to the next in the series. To start with, the questions are kept simple and use the fill in the blank style. As the student makes progress, the level of difficulty of the questions increase and take on a more abstract style. Time lines are used to compare structure. Correcting grammatical errors in written work is frequently used to help the student learn.

Each chapter carries a heading which spells out the grammar topic in that reading section. The reading sections depict real life situations as given in newspapers, internet, memos and reviews of movies. Teachers find this approach very helpful.

A good example for this kind of reading exercise is a review of the movie, "It's wonderful Life", to show how the 3rd conditional is used. The 3rd conditional is always given in bold letters to help the learners see it easily. An audio CD is included with the book for use in listening exercises. An interactive CD-Rom is also available as an extra and priced separately. Such extras add value to the course on English grammar.

This series of books are excellent in that they help the student learn English grammar on their own. It is also a valuable resource for those who teach English Language. It would be good idea of English language schools to include this in their library.

They have superior explanations, examples, and activities for all of the main verb tenses, conditional sentences, prepositions, nouns, and a lot more necessary grammar subjects. If I had to pick out an ESL text curriculum, this would be first on my list.

This is a pretty thorough treatment, which may be daunting to some students. It's definitely not what you'd want to use with children, but serious adult students who want their English to be better so they can find and keep jobs, for instance, will really appreciate the work involved. ESL teachers will be delighted to know that such a resource exists. - 31529

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