Customer Reviews

English Grammar In Use with Answers and CD ROM: A Self-study Reference and Practice Book for Intermediate Students of English

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

As an English teacher, I use this book as my grammar bible. This book comes in two volumes: one for beginners and one for intermediate students. Each book covers over 100 grammar points. Each point gets two pages. On one page there is an excellent explanation of the grammar point along with examples. On the facing page, lots of grammar exercises are provided.

I don't use this as my classroom text since the activities don't lend themselves to communication. However, the communicative texts I do use either have poor or non-existant grammar explanations. When students have difficult grammar questions, I often check with this book since the explanations are clear and easy to understand. If students request some practice homework, then I let them do the grammar exercises as homework. It really helps students improve their accuracy.

I definitely recommend this to English teachers and students who are studying English. It would be a great reference book, and a great self-study supplement for students. If you can only afford to buy one volume, I recommend the intermediate one because it answers some really difficult grammar questions well.

I've just bought the new edition with CD-Rom of the famous grammar book I used to study when I was a university student and I am really impressed about it.
The book has 144 units, on the left pages you have the grammar explanations with useful coloured drawings and on the right pages a series of exercises. The answers are given at the end of the book.
The CD-Rom can be installed onto your computer or just be run without installing the files onto your hard disk, but in both cases the CD-Rom must be in the drive.
The homepage is user-friendly indeed. In the middle you have the exercises menu and around it the function icons. What surprised me a lot was the presence of audiofiles. Once you have completed an exercise, you can even listen to the sentences by clicking on the loudspeaker icon and even record your own voice for comparison.
By holding down CTRL and left-clicking the mouse button on a word, the glossary opens and gives you the explanation of the word you don't know, and if you are connected to the Internet, you can have a look at the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary online, a dictionary with CD-Rom which I recommend to buy.
You can print all the exercises with or without the answers, have your scores memorized, receive a feedback for each mistake with useful notes on which unit of the grammar book to revise, and you know what? Both teachers and students can create their own tests by a simple click of the mouse! Just click on "Tests" and choose the language areas you like - the software will pick up the sentences for you from the database, after that you are asked to enter the number of questions for your test, from 1 till 25. The topics are those of the main menu, i.e. Present and past, Present perfect and past, Future, Modals, If and wish, Passive, Reported speech, Questions and auxiliary verbs, -ing and the infinitive, Articles and nouns, Pronouns and determiners, Relative clauses, Adjective and adverbs, Conjunctions and prepositions, Prepositions, Phrasal verbs. And of course you can print them.
I'm really happy I bought it - it's really worth the money!

This is a well-planned book with a clear and manageable format, but if you are using it as an aid to teaching American English, be prepared to explain such differences as the numerous Britishisms in vocabulary, and why there are terms similar to "in Broad Street" as opposed to "on Broad Street," as well as other British English grammar variations.

Students in the U.S. who learning from the book without an instructor may not realize this at all and find the usage confusing.

The explanantions are concise and clear. In a few cases the format can force some complex issues to be squeezed into the same allotment of two pages that is given to more readily learned topics, and I have to rely on additional books for more exercises.

Overall I find this an excellent book, but I long for an purely American English edition, so I can use it with fewer caveats to my students.

I have this book for intermediate students and also have the one with red cover for beginners. Initially bought this and other books to review grammar for Toefl and this was the only one I ended up using it. My friend is using the red book and that is very good for somebody who starts learning English.
I highly recommend this book for learning or reviewing English grammar. It's well organized easy to follow and understand. It covers all I was interested in to review and learn.
Thank you for the book.

I always keep a copy of this and PRACTICAL ENGLISH GRAMMAR within reach when I teach.
Its very good when I have to put together an impromptu grammar lesson, especially on a point that I've totally forgotten. The only catch is that (as another reviewer pointed out), the book uses British English... and sometimes as an American teacher I have to think a bit. (Usually I explain this to the student.)
Of course, if you teach E(F)L, its a good idea for the student to be aware of both British and American English, so maybe its not so bad.
The only other thing to be aware of is that each lesson consists of a page with explanations and examples, then follow up exercises... If you are teaching be sure to study the explanation page before class... you can really get yourself into trouble if you try to BS through it on the go.
(Of course, many teaching situations don't give teachers any prep time and adequate information on the class before going in the room. I've returned to EFL teaching on a part time basis to supplement my income and must admit, ideal situations that allow for adequate prep are almost as rare as my memory of a lot of the grammar points I learned in my training years ago!)
To get around this, here's what I do...
Sometimes if a student asks a question and I am not ready to answer it, I simply photo copy the chapter and say (with a pretentious all knowing look on my face) - - "I'll tell you what... take this home, read it... and your homework is to do A and B," then I make up "conversation substitution drills and dialogues" using the grammar points to reinforce the written element of the book, sometimes using SBS flash cards to prompt the forms.
Slick, ey?

This is a book well suited to both beginners and intermediate English students. The grammatical topics are well discussed but the exercises do not pose any challenge for the learners, in fact, this is the reason behind my four stars rating. Despite of being sometimes boring, the exhausting exercises of this book will help you to learn the main topics of the English language as regular workouts can help you to be in shape.

A very good explanation of various grammar points. The exercises that go with the explanations helps to reinforce the rules of grammar. An excellent homework resource, not just ESL students, but also for native speakers of English.

As an ESL Teacher, this is a must have for all teachers and students. It is simply the best grammar book on the market and has been for many years. This book is perfect for new and experienced teachers and students. Dont look any further and buy this.

I buy this book based in the advise of a friend that is an english teacher and the reviews that I read from amazon uk and amozon US. the book is very usefull for me. I never learn english from Class I learn english from HBO and Cinemax. Because of this I have a lot of problems with my grammar, I have quite a good vocabulary and my pronuntiation is pretty well, bt when I am writing... The problems appear this book help me a lot with that the study guide make me realize witch are my major mistakes and the cd is also pretty good. I recomend this book to all the people that think that they know enough english to not take classes again or for those who already take it but need an extra help in grammar, easy to follow and very clear. The only but is the quality of the paper... Is not bad, quite the opposite, too good, so if you are doing the book by your own ou will find almost imposible to erase in the pages, be carfull on that, from the rest... you will love it.

This is a great book for anyone studying English as a foreign language. Most ESL texts tend to skimp on the grammar points. For years we have coordinated and cross referenced all of our course books with the Murphy grammar books. EGUI provides students with additional explanations, quick reference and extensive practice to drive home basic and intermediate grammar points. The self-study guide/diagnostic in the back of the book is also a great tool to detect remedial grammar issues which may need to be reviewed.

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