English grammar - Roger Berry 2012

Preface

TO TEACHERS/LECTURERS. This book is intended for students of English who need an introduction to its grammar, whether as part of a degree in English or as preparation for teaching the language. It contains four strands:

the Introduction sections each describe a key area of grammar, starting with word classes and moving on through phrases to clauses and sentences.

the Development sections focus in more detail on one area usually related to that in the Introduction and often involving a re-evaluation of traditional accounts.

the Exploration sections enable students to apply what they have learnt and to hone their analytic skills by examining concordance lines or authentic texts connected to one particular area.

the Extension sections are built around selected readings on issues related to the previous sections, with the aim of taking students beyond the bounds of descriptive grammar into related approaches and theories.

The book may be used ’vertically’ (e.g. by doing all the Exploration sections first) or ’horizontally’.

Activities are offered throughout, not just in the Exploration sections; comments containing suggested answers are usually placed at the end of each section. A number of boxes on Terminology, Variation in English and Non-Standard Forms complement the main text. Extra information (including further activities) can be found on our website at www.routledge.com/cw/berry.

TO STUDENTS. This book has the following objectives:

1) to provide you with a thorough grounding in the most important areas of English grammar, which you will be able to apply in further studies in English.

2) to help you to understand how English ’works’ as a system, not as a jumble of isolated rules.

3) to encourage you to approach issues such as correctness, formality and variation realistically, in order to demonstrate that grammar is not always a matter of wrong and right, or black and white.

4) to show the connection between meaning and grammar, or rather between grammatical form and grammatical meaning. While it is sometimes necessary to focus on one or the other, there are numerous examples of how a change in one results in a change in the other.

5) to equip you with strategies to deal with areas of English grammar that are not covered on the course so that you can become ’your own grammarian’.

6) (if you have learnt English at school) to help you to re-evaluate the simplified and sometimes misleading notions that are common in English language classrooms.

7) to enable you to exploit your intuitions about English to make sense of what you know.