Customer Reviews

American English Idiomatic Expressions in 52 Weeks: An Easy Way to Understand English Expressions and Improve Speaking

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is the most helpful and valuable book that I have ever read as a second language speaker of English. The daily idiomatic expressions in American English were always nightmare for me before I had started to read and study this book.

The idioms are uniquely classified into different categories with its week-by-week methodology. The usage of everyday English explanations and illustrations makes idioms easy to understand. Every second language speaker of English should have this book in order to communicate effectively in English.

I am reading the book and enjoying it. Even though I have heard of many of the expressions and understand them when hearing, however this book helps you tremendously to be able to use these expressions in your own sentenses. It gives nice and easy applications.

Enjoy reading it.

Ihis is a new way to improve our english by reading something you like. It was so nice to put everything together as a book, which can be easily carried along with you.

I think this book is very helpful to all slang or informal language normally use in their life, explain very carefully the means for all expressions. I think is a good book to buy mostly for people is in learning english.

Well, 52 weeks may be a litte bit too long but it works finally. And it is easy to follow up. Try it!

Excellent reference book

This is a very poorly done book. Many of the definitions read as if they were written by a non-native speaker. Often the idiom and the definition are given as different parts of speech (i.e. one is a verb, the other an adjective); many are unclear; some are just wrong.

A few examples, easily found:

- "bag" is not "attain;" the author presumably means "obtain"

- neither "for goodness sake" nor "for heaven's sake" means "for the good of everyone concerned;" it is a non-specific expression of annoyance and exasperation

- "cost an arm and a leg," a verb phrase, is defined as "expensive," an adjective, rather than correctly as "to be expensive"

- "every dog has his day" is correctly explained as "everyone will have his chance or turn," but this is followed by a second definition, "everyone will get what he deserves," which is just wrong.

- "lay out" does not mean "plan something," it means "explain openly"

I tried using this book to teach my ESL classes for a few months, but found myself spending much of my time telling my students why its definitions are misleading or wrong. I finally gave up. Spare yourself and your students the exasperation. There are much better resources available.

This is a very good book and useful. I learned American idiomatic

expressions in a very short period.