Customer Reviews

501 English Verbs: with CD-ROM (Barron's Language Guides)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I purchased this book to review for our language school's ESL program. Though it is a useful tool in presenting all of the complexities of the English verb, as a practical tool for ESL students I cannot recommend it. It is needlessly complicated in its format. The book contains unusual and infrequent English verbs, such as "to cleave", "to yes" or "to be hemmed." It even provides two conjugations for "to hide," one meaning to conceal and one meaning to beat. However, this difference is noted only at the bottom of the page. These sorts of verbs permeate this book. It seems that English has plenty of high frequency verbs that make inclusion of so many bizarre and passive voice verbs unnecessary. This book bears little resemblance to its excellent cousins in the series: 501 French or Spanish verbs.

My friend bought this book to help teach English and not only has it got some very strange verb formations in it, but ones that are totally wrong! We're surprised it has made it into the shops in fact. For example, it contains the verb 'to stink' and as one of its formations lists 'to be stunk'. We are both English and we have never heard of this, so it's misleading to someone learning English. There is even 'I am deep frozen'! This seems unnecessary, as it would surely never be said? It is thorough, but unfortunately much of it is wrong and would teach a foreign person to speak very odd English.

I learned French and Spanish using their equivalent... 501 French and 501 Spanish verbs....and now I buy this book and give it to new learners of English when I teach them. Gaining a command of English, or any language, depends first upon your mastery of the verbs as presented in such a book. Sure, no more information is conveyed about the structure of the various forms than could be conveyed with 50 verbs, but it is handly to have the extra verbs defined in a single reference.

I bought this book for my wife when she moved to the United States in the mid 1990s, and it quickly became a very useful reference for her in her ESL classes, and for me when I helped her with her assignments.

Like the other books in the 501 series, every verb in the language cannot possibly be included small reference, but there are enough examples of common irregular verbs to cover most conjugation scenarios. In addition, the 501 verbs selected go a long way in terms of the vocabulary of day-to-day reading, writing, and speaking.

The layout of each page is the same throughout the book, so you know exactly where to look for the conjugation of a specific tense. In addition, editors have made good use of white space so the content is easy on the eyes.

I strongly recommend this book as a reference guide to anyone who is learning English, whether you're in school or trying to pick up the language on your own.

I bought this book for my girlfriend, who is Italian, to help her with English. Granted she already knew some English, but this book has greatly helped her with the verbs.

Having been a bilingual or Spanish teacher for the past twenty plus years, at times I have needed a book just like this one! Unfortunately, a year ago, it was lost! I loved the book. Any time I quickly needed to check a conjugation or was playing a game and wanted to know the exact conjugation for my students, I found it in this text! It is definitely a *5* star resource for teachers!

Conjugating verbs is not as easy as it seems (lay, had lain?...). What 501 English Verbs does is show you how to conjugate a verb so you don't sound like a hillbilly. Especially useful for irregular verbs.

When I bought this book, I was expecting that I could refer to many usages of 501 verbs. However, the content of this book was just presenting various verb forms, like "I, we, you, they forgive", "he, she, it forgives", "I am forgiving" and "we, you, they are forgiving." If you learn English only for a couple of months, you will know these things. So, I am not going to recommend this one to anyone except beginners.

I got this actually to help some Brazilian friends learn English & how English verbs can work. Turns out it was not as necessary as I thought. It's probably best for someone who doesn't know English at all & doesn't have someone who speaks & writes in English to help them.

501 English Verbs: with CD-ROM (Barron's Language Guides)

I am teaching a Spanish speaking friend how to speak English. I especially like how this book singled out the Essential 55 verbs to help a new student form sentences.