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PREFACE
The book is intended for school EFL teachers. It gives clear explanations and useful practice of
English grammar. Some of those grammatical pieces are included which are not always easy to find on
the pages of grammar books. Very often teachers and then their students receive one and the same portion
of grammatical information year in, year out and get an idea of the English language being too elementary
to express a great variety of meanings. The purpose of the book is to bring to the attention of the reader
certain allegedly simple grammatical topics, disclose their actual essence and show their place in
communication. The grammatical items are presented not in their pure way, but are correlated with other
linguistic notions. For example, number of nouns concerns the problem of conversion and agreement
between the subject and the predicate. Comparison with the Russian language is made where necessary.
The book is not a reference book, it includes the information which deserves a teacher's attention in the
opinion of the author.
A selection of exercises from English teaching courses will provide the EFL teachers with various
activities (mostly of a communicative character) to practise the described grammatical material. The
given assignments help create the conditions in which the knowledge of a foreign language becomes a
must and the only way of self-expression. They will help learners not only form correct sentences but also
use them correctly in context. They are aimed at teaching students of different levels of knowledge and
admit of replacement of a more difficult vocabulary for an easier one.
The material composed by native speakers was chosen because it presents pieces of real English
culture, traditions and way of life and because it excludes errors so common in the books written by non-
native speakers. The description of the similar conditions, circumstances of life in our country can be
practised as a follow-up.
INTRODUCTION. PARTS OF SPEECH
Man is not well defined as homo sapiens ("man with wisdom").
For what do we mean by wisdom? More recently anthropologists
have talked about "man the tool-maker," but apes can make primitive
tools. What sets man apart from the rest of the animal kingdom is his
ability to speak; he is "man the speaking animal" — homo loquens.
But it is grammar that makes language so essentially a human
characteristic. For though other creatures can make meaningful
sounds, the link between sound and meaning is for them of a far
more primitive kind than it is for man, and the link for man is
grammar. Man is not merely homo loquens; he is homo
grammaticus.
Frank Palmer. Grammar.
The idea of the book is to bring to the attention of EFL teachers those areas of English Grammar which
lie fallow and yield very poor results, if any, because the teachers in their strivings to get more in a very
short while lose hold of extremely important things. The teachers imply that the learners are supposedly
aware of quite a lot of linguistic knowledge if they are adults or are at the age of, say, ten (and they really
are if we think in terms of their native language); or, on the contrary, they are too young to be given
information which the previous education and upbringing have not yet put at their disposal. So, we leave
our students (who happened to be less educated in a foreign language or are privileged to be younger,
than we are) unequipped with the foundations of the language learning.
Ask your students what grammar (the word is repeated by them quite often) is and they will be
surprised to hear this kind of question from you and most unexpected answers will be given you. 1 mean
to say the following: try to find some time to discuss basic frequently used notions so that their meanings
will become wholly understandable to your students, and they will cease saying them in a parrot-like
way.After deciphering them the students will get an additional background and impetus in their linguistic