Grammar: A Friendly Approach

Citation

Ellis‐Barrett, L. (2008), "Grammar: A Friendly Approach", Library Review, Vol. 57 No. 2, pp. 157-158. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530810854071

Approaching grammar is not something for the faint‐hearted. The first time many of us come across the intricacies of grammar is at school when we are trying to learn a foreign language. Usually, because so few children in English schools have been taught the rudiments of English grammar, there are additional challenges facing those learning the new language. Suddenly children and often adults have to learn the complex grammar that is the building block for every language. Grammar is a complex field and many of those in a teaching role do not approach it in the right way, putting students off and never quite resolving many of the common problems encountered. Part of the issue lies within the very nature of the language, when we speak in English our grammar is almost always very good. When we write all too often apostrophes (made famous recently by Lynne Truss) are misplaced or forgotten, passive voices are used rather than the active or neutral and I could go on with more examples.

Rather than providing her readers with page upon page of correct and incorrect sentences and other examples of incorrect grammar, Sinclair has created a mini soap‐opera in her book. Three university students, Barbara, Kim and Abel meet after an informal essay‐writing session at their university and discover that they are all being pulled up by their lecturers on their poor grammar. Thus their story begins and their quest to write the grammatically perfect essays can be followed through the book.

From the outset Sinclair makes it clear that her intended audience is the university student and she has grounded her writing with real examples of common mistakes, making the book both accessible to a wider audience and immensely readable. She sets out a list of the ten most common problems that lecturers encounter in student essays, addressing these and more issues throughout the book. The issues range from confusing common words and using informal language to being too pompous – such as misuse of thesauri –‐ and including too many or too few paragraphs. The book covers bad language; dangling participles; verbs and tenses, voices, subjects, sentences, relationships, punctuation, apostrophes and finally correction. It is written in a very informal style, short and snappy, and it is filled with charts and tables for quick and easy reference. Every chapter concludes with a brief summary allowing the time pressed reader to quickly check the rules. There is also a bullet‐pointed conclusion followed by a list of technical terms relating to the each chapter which can be quickly referenced in the glossary.

Confusing terms are common in grammar. For example “dangling participles” and “auxiliary verbs” as well as “subordinate conjunctions” and “dependent clauses”. However, the explanations given by Sinclair are succinct and written in such an accessible style that, having finished reading a particular chapter or even the whole book, the student should feel confident that they have been equipped with the knowledge to write a grammatically correct essay and that, should they struggle, help is at hand with this handy reference guide. For information, a “dangling participle” is one that is not related to its auxiliary verb or subject. “Auxiliary verbs” are used to show the tense or mood of an action. “Subordinate conjunctions” are conjunctions that introduce subordinate clauses (a conjunction is a joining word and a subordinate clause is one that cannot function as a sentence alone). A “dependent clause” is another term or a subordinate clause and depends on the presence of a conjunction or relative pronoun.

The glossary (on page 130 of the paperback edition – there is also a hardback version of this book at £45.00), refers readers to the chapter in which the term has been discussed in detail and, when a word that can be found in the glossary appears in the text for the first time, it is italicised. This is a useful feature of the book. The additional features – “Appendix 1: More Details on Parts of Speech” includes extra information on verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives and adverbs; “Appendix 2: More Details on Clauses” includes adverbial clauses, adjectival clauses and noun clauses; and “Appendix 3: Warning Signs” includes misspellings and wrongly placed apostrophes. In addition, there is a short bibliography and a full index. In summary, this is an excellent, short, accessible and quick reference guide to the horrors of English grammar.