Funnily enough, I knew absolutely nothing about English grammar until I first started thinking about becoming a language teacher. Actually, if you’re a native speaker of English, that shouldn’t really come as a surprise at all. What that means, though, is that my grammar learning career is just about reaching its fifteenth year now, with no signs of me mastering the subject yet! Here are the books that have helped me along the way, both in getting my head around what grammar is and in enabling me to teach grammar.
1. Real Grammar: A Corpus-Based Approach to English
This is one of my favourite, if not best ever, classroom resources. OK, it’s specifically aimed at EAP, my area of professional interest, but if that’s your kind of thing and you’re looking to meaningfully approach the teaching of grammar in any academic course, this book can become your best friend.
This innovative, corpus-based grammar text uses the latest corpus research (as of 2009, anyway) to show how 50 grammatical structures and expressions are used in speech and writing. This focus on authentic usage motivates students to move past traditional grammar texts and use English more like native speakers.
Real Grammar is an essential tool and can be used either as a self-study by students, or as a teaching tool. The fifty independent units provide total flexibility, allowing the text to fit any curriculum. There is a rich array activities, varying from contextualized examples to discovery and analysis, which help learners understand and use the target grammar. I can’t recommend this enough to all those EAP practitioners among you.
2. Uncovering Grammar
An absolute stone cold classic that will instantly change the way you look at grammar… for the better! As teachers, Thornbury notes, we often talk about ‘covering’ grammar points. In this legendary text he explains why it is more useful to think about how we ‘uncover’ grammar, to reveal the workings of the system to our students and encourage them to notice what is going on.
This fabulous book uses extracts from exchanges in real classrooms, authentic texts and language teaching tasks to exemplify grammatical patterns. It also provides lots of practical activities so that you can immediately and easily put the ideas to work in your classroom. I’ve never met anyone who has a bad word to say about this utterly essential text.
I won this in an end-of-conference raffle!
3. Teaching English Grammar
I love this primarily because I won a copy in an end-of-conference raffle! My good fortune aside, this book does exactly what it says on the tin; it tells you what to teach and how to teach it. This title is perfect for trainees, experienced teachers and teacher trainers, and specifically those teachers who are unsure of how to present grammar, or those who are looking for new ways to present it.
Teaching English Grammar aims to combine language information and a methodological guide in a straightforward, authoritative way, thus helping teachers prepare and deliver effective grammar lessons. This great book provides teachers with an authoritative and practical guide for teaching grammar and helps to make preparing grammar lessons easy and straightforward. Wherever you are in your ‘grammar teaching’ career, you could do worse than own a copy of this book.
4. Teaching Grammar Creatively
This represents a second entry for Mr. Thornbury on the list (and not the last). Teaching Grammar Creatively is a practical resource book that offers a variety of lessons and activities for everyday use in English language classes. The book offers more than 50 complete lessons covering a wide range of grammar structures, learner levels, and age groups.
Each lesson in Teaching Grammar Creatively is divided into two main sections: Language Awareness Activities and Creative Grammar Practice.
- The Language Awareness Activities aim to introduce and provide initial practice of items that may still be unfamiliar to students.
- The Creative Grammar Practice section provides ideas for a deeper and more personalized familiarization with these items. Each lesson ends with the creation of a learner text – a permanent and original record of the grammar, in the form of a story or a poem for example.
5. Functional Grammar in the ESL Classroom: Noticing, Exploring and Practicing
This book provides a set of easy to use techniques that help learners discover for themselves how grammar works in real world contexts and how grammatical choices are not just about form but about meaning.
Each technique they introduce is accompanied by sample teaching ideas, covering a wide range of grammatical topics including verb tense, voice, reference and the organization of texts.
Another text that has saved my life on a number of occasions.
6. Practical English Usage
OK, this is the classic teacher reference guide. First published back in 1980, this classic text is a unique reference guide which addresses problem points in the English language as encountered by both learners and teachers.
It gives information and advice that is practical, clear, reliable, and easy to find. Most of the book is about grammar, but it also covers selected points of vocabulary, idioms, style, pronunciation, and spelling. This fabulous text was the first I purchased as I embarked on my career as a language teacher and has saved my life on so many occasions as a rookie teacher… let it do the same for you!
7. Engaging Grammar: Practical Advice for Real Classrooms
Does grammar instruction have to elicit moans and groans from students and teachers alike? Only when it’s taught the old-fashioned way: as a series of rules to follow and errors to “fix” that have little or no connection to practical application or real-world writing.
Benjamin challenges the idea of “skill and drill” grammar in this lively, engaging, and immensely practical guide. With a view of grammar is grounded in linguistics, she teaches us how to make informed decisions about teaching grammar–how to move beyond fixing surface errors to teaching how grammar can be used as the building blocks of sentences to create meaning.
Oliva’s contribution comes in the form of a teacher’s journal, chronicling how the concepts in this book can work in a real classroom. The perspectives of Benjamin and Oliva combine to provide a full picture of what grammar instruction can be: an exciting and accessible way to take advantage of students’ natural exuberance about language.
Although she does not advocate for teaching to the test, Benjamin acknowledges the pressures students face when taking high-stakes tests such as the SAT and ACT. Thus included is a chapter on how to improve students’ editing skills to help prepare them for the short-answer portion of these tests.
8. How to Teach Grammar
I did warn you there’d be one more, didn’t I! If you’re new to the language teaching profession and you need a ‘how-to’ guide that you’re guaranteed to understand and be able to implement in your classes, look no further than here.
How to Teach Grammar demonstrates methods for practicing a variety of grammar topics, dealing with errors, and integrating grammar instruction into general methodologies. The book covers a broad range of areas, from why we should teach grammar to how not to teach it. Thornbury offers three approaches: teaching grammar from examples, from texts and from rules. He also covers issues related to correcting it, practicing it and integrating it through a couple of different approaches, such as PPP and task-based teaching and learning.
9. Fifty Ways to Teach Them Grammar: Tips for ESL/EFL Teachers
As with my previous list which looked at vocabulary, my final choice sees me taking a punt on a relatively new title. The aim of this book is to go beyond what teachers and learners encounter in their course books, delivering more practice after they’ve finished the exercises in these books.
This book is full of imaginative and enjoyable games, drills, and activities to practice different grammatical structures such as verb tenses, articles, phrasal verbs, pronouns, relative clauses, modals, word forms, syntax, and more. It is divided into three categories: Reading-writing exercises; Speaking activities, and; Fun & games.
10. What do you choose for number ten?
As always on my blog, I encourage you to participate in the creation of posts! I’d like you to nominate your favourite book on teaching grammar so that I can add it to my choices.
My favourite is ‘Explaining English Grammar’ by George Yule – I have found that it really explains the grammar well, as all as offering practical ideas to use in class.
I’m with David. I find that Yule’s book is one of the best books on English grammar. It is thoroughly explained there.
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I’ve always liked Betty Azar’s Collections.
Yes, I have always liked Betty Azar’s collections. I think they are very well explained and have great exercises. =)
I would add to this impressive list:
1. A classic: Longman English Grammar (Grammar Reference) . L.G. Alexander. 1989
2. The Teacher’s Grammar of English. Coursebook and Reference Guide. Ron Cowan. (2013, 6th printing)
The English Verb – Michael Lewis – not for teaching, but for understanding it as teachers.
The Anti-grammar Grammar Book – Nick Hall and John Shepheard
and I believe from Grammar to Grammaring – Diane Larsen Freeman.
I’d second Candy’s recommendation of The English Verb by Lewis. It’s completely revolutionised how I look at verbs and tenses, and how I introduce them to my students.
Thanks, am sharing this great list around!
I may be really biased, but I have a blog column to recommend rather than a book. My editor, Tanya Trusler, specialized in teaching TOEIC and TOEFL classes for many years before joining Red River Press. Every Thursday she shares some of her secrets to teaching grammar on the ESL Library blog. Check it out if you’re interested! It’s useful for students as well: http://www.esl-library.com/blog/author/tanya-trusler/
Let me add Martin Parrott, Grammar for English Language Teachers, which was our text for the TESOL Diploma at Oxford House in Barcelona. Extensive, summarizes critical discussion, on any given grammar point, presents typical learner errors, but most importantly, introduces the notion that we initially teach learners rules of thumb that will show themselves to be insufficient and morph into more complex concepts as the learner’s repertoire grows. The book is a bit of a monster, actually, but isn’t any grammar book, with its potentially vexing explanations that you need to consider from all sides before they start to really make sense. I quite liked the tasks, which helped me prepare for the exam.
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