Customer Reviews

English Grammar Workbook For Dummies

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a great book with a lot of helpful exercises to make sure you've really gotten the concepts taught in each lesson. There is still a little too much emphasis on the grammar lingo but it's a lot less than most books. In my opinion, you shouldn't have to know what kind of verb it is to use it correctly.

I am very pleased with this product, and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to improve their grammar.

That workbook really helped me to see my mistakes in grammar, specially as i'm a non native speaker.

This book is packed with exercises and useful tips. It starts from basic verbs and nouns, and moves onto punctuation, dialogue, and more advanced writing skills. I am finding this book very useful, as an aspiring horror and mystery writer. I need to brush-up on my grammar skills, and having this workbook, plus the English Grammar for Dummies book, has really helped me with some of my personal goals. Thanks, and I highly recommend this book.

I wish I had saved my English books from grammar school because it seems that English is being taught differently these days and not for the better. I am learning how much I have forgotten.

This book is my first experience with one of the huge array of "Dummies" books. My expectations were low. I was pleasantly surprised that this book is exactly the kind of book I had been seeking to polish my English grammar skills.

This book contains twenty chapters organized into six parts. The parts and chapters are (using a summary version for some of the lengthy titles):

Part I: Grammar Basics

Chapter 1: Finding the Right Verb at the Right Time
Chapter 2: Pairing Subjects and Verbs Correctly
Chapter 3: Pronoun Basics
Chapter 4: Writing Complete Sentences

Part II: Mastering Mechanics

Chapter 5: The Comma
Chapter 6: Apostrophes
Chapter 7: Quotation Marks
Chapter 8: Capital Letters

Part III: Applying Proper Grammar in Tricky Situations

Chapter 9: Choosing the Best Pronoun: Case, Number, and Clarity
Chapter 10: Choosing the Right Verb for Tricky Sentences
Chapter 11: Are You and Your Verbs in the Right Mood?
Chapter 12: Writing for Electronic Media

Part IV: Describing and Comparing

Chapter 13: Adjectives and Adverbs
Chapter 14: Placing Descriptions Correctly
Chapter 15: Forming Comparisons

Part V: Improving Your Writing Style

Chapter 16: Parallel Writing
Chapter 17: Adding Spice and Cutting Fat from Your Sentences
Chapter 18: Steering Clear of Tricky Word Traps

Part VI: The Part of Tens

Chapter 19: Ten Overcorrections
Chapter 20: Ten Errors to Avoid at All Costs

Each chapter contains sections, with each section describing a grammar concept. Each section contains questions about the grammar concept (chapters 19 and 20 are the exception, as neither has any questions). The number of questions varies from a few to dozens. The answers for each chapter are at the end of the chapter, making checking of answers relatively easy, noting that chapters 19 and 20 are the exception, since neither has any questions.
At the end of the book is a marvelous appendix containing exercises with the title "Grabbing Grammar Goofs." The appendix has nearly 200 questions testing the concepts of the book. Thus, the appendix is a great way to determine how well a reader has learned the lessons of the twenty chapters.

Following the appendix is an index. I found the index to be of mixed value. I sometimes found it easier to flip through pages than to use the index because I could not always remember the name of the part of speech I was seeking. I suppose with sufficient practice remembering the names will become second nature.

The question is whether this book is effective, useful and valuable, and for whom this book might be valuable. I found the book to be extremely effective. For example, I have a nasty tendency to use "which" inappropriately. Let me provide an example of a sentence I might write. "I believe there are portions of this book that I will use daily, which is a very good thing." The word "which" is a pronoun that is supposed to be substituting for something in the previous sentence. However, in the case of my example I improperly used "which" to refer to most of the sentence.

There are many ways to rephrase my example sentence. One variation might be, "I believe there are portions of this book that I will use daily, meaning that this book could be quite beneficial." As you can see from this example, there could be dozens or even hundreds of correct ways to rephrase my example sentence. Therein is one of the difficulties of this book. This book is great for helping to remind me of what is right and wrong in English grammar. This book is less effective at answers to the question.

Does my criticism mean that this book is useless? A weakness does not mean the book is useless. The weakness means that the book will not be useful to all levels of English grammar students. I think that if you are using this book to recall rules you once learned, or need to figure out where you might have holes in your education, then this book is fantastic. I always thought my English grammar skills were above average. All it takes is a book like this to make one humble, or perhaps to embarrass someone who thought he, or she, was doing the right thing when he was not.

My biggest criticism of the book is the corny jokes. Some of them are mildly humorous. Many of the jokes just get in the way of getting to the important stuff. I suppose the author intended the jokes to help the learning experience. I found myself zipping through portions of the explanation that included the jokes. Unfortunately, I also accidentally zipped through some of the explanation, so I had to re-read some portions.

Who will not find this book useful? If you are trying to learn English grammar, this book is a poor starting point. There is too little explanation for each of the topics. On the other hand, if you use the book as an outline and augment each explanation with more research and practice, it could be an effective portion of a bigger learning plan.

I have been looking for a book that would provide me with an overview of English grammar. I thought I had gotten somewhat sloppy and needed something to put me back on track; I was right. This book was perfect for my needs. I can also see this book as a great help to prepare for the SAT, ACT or other test that asks detailed questions regarding English grammar.

Enjoy!

This book is excellent whether you are studying for the SATs or refreshing your English grammar. It presents all information from the very basics of punctuation, quotation marks, to harder grammar. In addition, the exercises included are very thorough, with every chapter having an overall review.

The reason for one star missing is that the content of the exercises tries too hard to be funny which is a little distracting from the grammar itself.

As an English-as-a-Second-Language teacher I was interested in seeing this book as a possible workbook for my students. The exercises--clearly set up with lots of space for you to write your own sentences--were promising. And I liked that the answers were there, right after the exercises. There was no need to go to the end of the book for them.

And the organization was good--from the most basic and essential ideas of grammar -- an overview, then parts of speech, then a section on punctuation, improving writing with adjectives, adverbs and comparisons. Then a good section on writing tips--practice with things that will strengthen your writing, tips to remember, mistakes to train yourself to avoid.

So...this is a good book, worthy, in my opinion at least, of four stars. There's a lot that can be learned from it.

But..back to my original question, "Will this be good for adult ESL students?" my answer was, "No". Part of the reason is the "For Dummies" format itself--humor (sometimes strained and much of it more of a barrier than a help to ESL students), choppy and frequently changing topics to keep the readers interest (but that may be more irritating and confusing than helpful to those whose native language isn't English), and examples/practices that are too long, and too wordy.

So...probably helpful for college-bound students or others that are looking for some practice with grammar, but not for most non-native English learners. Those students, imo, would be better served elsewhere.

There are a million zillion grammar books out there and as an English major I've pretty much seen them all. Strangely enough, however, I'm actually not that great at grammar. At least, not that great in knowing how it works. I know where to punctuate most of the time, but that's only because I go by what feels right. Which is why this DUMMIES workbook is a great resource for English writers of all levels in the field. The exercises not only allow you to fine tune your grammar knowledge, but lets you know WHY things are done certain ways. Very helpful for someone like me who often tutors other writers and finds it difficult to explain Why things are done and not just How things are done.

With that being said, I must also say that this is literally an English workbook for Dummies. About 80% of the book focuses on the most basic of basics, so that if you passed 8th grade English with a C or better you will probably become slightly annoyed by the novice exercises. Skipping them works just fine, but the lessons are built on top of each other and are actually designed to be practiced from beginning to end. I tried skipping around a little too freely and got slightly lost on understanding the goals of each exercise doing that. It helped a lot if I did even a few problems from each lesson.

Overall, I think this is a great addition to the lineup of grammar books. Geraldine Woods doesn't necessarily make grammar fun and exciting, but she does write clearly and offers an excellent selection of exercises that are sure to improve anyone who tries them. Even experts have something to gain, although I would definitely say that this is a book almost strictly designed for beginners. It is a great addition to the DUMMIES series, but probably not a top-shelf grammar guide for the literary.

As a teacher who has used various different curricula, I was interested to see what was offered in this book. The layout is good with each chapter based on a topic. The topic is then followed by questions that involve fill in the blank or other response by the reader.

Another topic is covered and then there is another set of questions to give the reader a chance to work through some practice questions or examples and then at the end of that same chapter, there are answers to all of the questions.

No thumbing through the book to find the answers- that is a really nice feature, I think.

There are a lot of good notations such as WARNINGS, TEST ALERTS for what will appear on standardized testing, PRACTICE, TIPS,etc.

This book is appropriate for students who are in middle school or high school, or anyone who needs a grammar refresher course.

The only thing I am not sure about is the paper- it is very rough paper, like old newspaper quality. It makes it difficult to erase on for anyone who might want to use the books over again or for other students.

That can be easily solved by doing problems on other paper and leaving the book blank.

The layout of the book is good and easy to follow, but I took off one star for the crummy paper quality.