Grammar In Context

by Hugh Gethin

235 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1983

Reviews

[Esdaile · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had no idea until today that "Goodreads" also listed books such as this, which whatever one thinks of it, is not and not intended to be, a "good read"! I am an English language trainer by profession and this is one of the many books of English grammar exercises which I have on my shelf. It offers exercises at proficiency level in English, a very high level usually used to describe non-native speakers of English who have taken or are taking the so called Cambridge English Proficiency Level examination. In my opinion, the proficiency level course and examination fails to challenge the learner in terms of active as opposed to passive knowledge of English. This is, I strongly believe, an abiidng failure of all high level English grammar exercise books and courses. To illustrate my point: there are six (or eight if you distinguish between will and shall) forms of the future in English excluding future perfect, namely simple and continuous present, simple and continuous will and "simple" and continuous going to. No book to my knowledge challenges the active knowledge and skills of the learner by offering the learner an exercise in which any of the six forms may be chosen. Instead, exercises are offered in which only two or three forms are offered as possibilities, giving the learner the false impression, on successfully completing a series of exercises, that he/she is fully proficcient in the extremely refined and complex use of English future forms. Another example: exercises with the choice of infinitive or gerund are made laughably easy in some books by printing the preposition preceding the gerund. Given that even intermediate level students are usually aware that a preposition when followed by a verb is followed by a verb in its gerund not infinitive form, it is not hard to guess that the correct form to chose in this case will be the gerund.
Gethin's book does not go as far as that, but his gerund and infiinitive exercises are not very challenging given that, for example, where there are two possibilitiues with two slightly alternating meanings, his exercise offers the same verb in two situations in two phrases one after the other, so that the learner knows that one is infiniitve and one gerund. Many non native speakers of English (especially the Dutch and Scandanavians and increasingly Germans) are more competent in English grammar than in the grammar of their own language and more comptent in English grammar than many native speakers. That being the case, they need more challenging exercices than the ones offered here, where Mr. Gethin takes the student by the hand, as it were, and points him or her, with little ambiguity, in the grammatically right direction.
On a psoitive note, this book is rather good at integrating perceptive observations about tendencies and general rules which even experienced trainers can overlook, with accompanying examples. This is the strength of the book and why, despite its considerable weakness (described above), it still has a place on my shelves and why I still sometimes use it. In fact, I am planning to do so today for a group of high level English German lawyers, which is how I came to this Goodreads review in the first place.

[Kungfupanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is very useful for the student learning English linguistic, especially in writing.

[Štěpán]

I hate that I have to know this book.