Customer Reviews

English the Easy Way (Barron's Easy Way)

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

 

 

I found this text to be a waste of money as an ESL teacher of beginner to advanced students. The layout was dense, illustrations were nonexistent, the exercises were limited, and the contexts used in the introductions of each unit were unhelpful. If it weren't only $10 I would return it. Instead I looked for the 1985 version, bought it and was much happier.

I cannot recommend this book. I bought it to help me in writing a history book I am having published (The Super Summary of World History), and it was no help at all. I suggest The Elements of Style as a good alternative. This is printed in the workbook style, which requires one to go from lesson to lesson to achieve the goal of learning the subject. I needed something far different.

In my opinion this is a brush up kind of "course" on English, but not a very good one. The authors think that definitions alone will cause one to understand what the parts of English are, and a few examples suffice to show the reader how to incorporate the idea into writing, speaking or whatever. It doesn't work. Once a concept has been covered the next part of the book assumes the student now has that down pat and the authors do not spend enough time explaining how these parts of speech relate to one another or how they might be critical in good writing.

Look elsewhere for an English course.

This is an easy to understand English book. I had used an earlier edition in teaching and was excited to find the book.

I'm using this book already, borrowed from a friend... and I had decided to buy it just because when I read a good book I want to own it. Its clear, with a lot of exercises, just lack the answers (important factor for those that aren't quite well familiar with english) but, in overall it's a valuable book and helpfull to learn english