Customer Reviews

The Article Book: Practice toward Mastering a, an, and the

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Using the right English article is the most challenging part of the English language for those Asian students whose native languages do not exercise articles as distinctivey as the English does. (Plural/singular words is the next hardest part.) Even for those who have achieved considerable skills in English as the second language confess a trouble with articles. This book does a great job removing the haze in association with the use of articles. As a Korean student, I have been looking for a book like this for years. I sincerely thank the author for having introduced this book although I wish he had covered more extensively with this subject in this book.

As far as I'm aware, this is the only book of its type. As such it is a valuable tool for the student trying to improve his/her ability with articles. However, too many of the example sentences used in the book are decidedly unnatural. Also, some of the rules are too dogmatic - English is rather more flexible than the author allows. Finally, the book has a number of misprints and errors. Not enough to seriously undermine the text, but enough to make you wary.

To sum up, a reasonable text, which covers most of the ground. Some updated examples and a greater attention to detail would help greatly.

I am a Chinese and have learned English for almost 20 years. I am OK with most English grammars, but still I have a lot of trouble with articles. I found this book is very helpful. Although it did not explain why, it provides a lot of useful rules and the exercises corresponding to the rules are very helpful. I recommend this book.