Longman / Prentice Hall

English

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Understanding English Grammar, 7/E
Martha J. Kolln, The Pennsylvania State University
Robert W Funk, Eastern Illinois University

ISBN-10: 0321316835
ISBN-13: 9780321316837

Publisher: Longman
Copyright: 2006
Format: Cloth; 480 pp
Published: 05/16/2005

Suggested retail price: $106.67
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This market-leading text for advanced grammar courses is a comprehensive description of sentence structure that encourages students to recognize and use their innate language expertise as they study the systematic nature of sentence grammar.

A practical blend of the most useful elements of both traditional and new linguistic grammar, the text emphasizes whole structures, most specifically the ten basic sentence patterns introduced in Chapter 2. Two key features separate this book from others: its clear organization and its user-friendly, accessible language. Both students and teachers appreciate the self-teaching quality that incremental exercises provide throughout the chapters, with answers at the end of the book.

Organization is from whole to part. After an opening chapter that touches on the history of classroom grammar and other language issues, Chapter 2 presents ten basic sentence patterns with their various slots described according to both form and function.
Words and Phrases: An Overview. This useful overview opens Chapter 2 and provides a quick review of (or introduction to) nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositional phrases and introduces the concepts of noun phrase and verb phrase in clear, jargon-free language, including helpful ways for students to make use of their internal language expertise.

Instruction is clear and accessible. Sentence expansions in Chapters 3-9 provide readers with a structure, a framework, on which to organize the new concepts learned.
Traditional diagrams illustrate the patterns and their expansions. The diagram is used as a tool to help students recognize the structural relationship of the various sentence structures and provide a visual framework for the sentence patterns and their expansions.
The word classes, described in detail in Part IV, are based on the structural linguists’ division of form and structure classes, rather than the Latin-based eight parts of speech.
Extensive activities in each chapter include “Investigating Language,” “Questions for Discussion,” and “Classroom Applications.” Also included are “Sentences for Practice,” for which answers are provided only in the Instructors Manual. All provide further material for class discussions. A list of Key Terms also appears in each chapter.

Chapter 14, “Rhetorical Grammar,” illustrates the links between grammar knowledge and effective writing, an especially valuable chapter for future teachers.

Chapter 1 includes an expanded discussion of usage, along with a new section explaining three definitions of “grammar,” a topic the students will find useful in considering the place of grammar in the curriculum.
“ELL Issues” are new, highlighted mini-lessons on topics of special interest to English Language Learners (Chs. 3, 4, 5, 7, 12, & 13).
A new Chapter 15, “Purposeful Punctuation,” brings together all of the punctuation discussions from throughout the book, providing a valuable reference tool.
Enhanced explanations and new exercises on the passive voice in Chapter 3 appear along with further discussion of verb forms.
New topics include “Tense and Aspect” and “The Passive Get” in Chapter 3, “Compound Words” in Chapter 10, and, in Chapter 14, “The Linking be and Metaphor” and “Metadiscourse.”
More diagrams have been added throughout the text to better illustrate concepts for students. Among the new diagrams are those illustrating imperative sentences (commands), several of the sentence modifiers in Chapter 8, and a number of other sentence variations.
Updated exercises and activities, along with streamlined discussions throughout the chapters, result in an even more accessible, student-friendly text.

Contents

Preface xv

Part I

Introduction 1

Chapter 1

The Study of Grammar: An Overview 3

The English Grammarians 3

Three Definitions of Grammar 5

Modern Linguistics 6

Structural Grammar 6

Transformational Grammar 7

The Issue of Correctness 8

Language Variety 10

Language Change 11

Language in the Classroom 12

Key Terms 13