The Grammaring Guide to English Grammar
with Exercises
Second Edition
By Péter Simon
Contents
Introduction
Acknowledgements
About the author
About the proofreader
Pretest
Chapter 1: Time, tense and aspect
Chapter 2: Modals
Chapter 3: Conditionals and unreal tenses
Chapter 4: Indirect speech
Chapter 5: Passive voice and causative structures
Chapter 6: Non-finite verb forms
Chapter 7: Relative clauses
Chapter 8: Inversion
Chapter 9: Articles
Chapter 10: Countable and uncountable nouns
Chapter 11: The subjunctive
Appendix
List of quotes
List of exercises
Glossary
Symbols used in this book
Bibliography
Copyright
Afterword
Introduction
What is this book and who is it for?
The Grammaring Guide to English Grammar by Péter Simon is a resource book on the grammar of Standard British English. It is intended for intermediate to advanced students of English as a second or foreign language who have already studied the basic grammar of English. It covers the most important areas of English grammar and concentrates on structures which may cause difficulty at an intermediate level or above.
How the book is organised
The book starts with a pretest that helps you identify the areas you need to work on. The pretest is followed by eleven chapters, broken down to a number of subchapters that each deal with a specific grammar point. The related explanations are accompanied by real-life sample sentences, timeline diagrams, tables, and quotes. If a similar point or the same point is discussed in a different part of the book, you will find cross-references to that point. Where appropriate, chapters begin with guiding questions and end with revision questions. Most of the chapters are followed by exercises, including multiple choice, sentence transformation, error correction, gap filling and matching exercises, as well as communicative tasks that can be done in language lessons. At the end of the book, there is an appendix which contains a list of the most common irregular verb forms and the most important spelling rules; a list of the quotes that appear in the book; and a glossary that defines grammatical terms frequently used in the explanations.
How to use this book
The chapters in this book are not arranged in order of difficulty. This way, the book can be used for quick reference on specific points of interest, as well as for systematic study, either as a self-study grammar book or as additional material in an ESL/EFL course. No matter which way you use the book, it is recommended that you follow the cross-references, which will lead you to further information on a given item. The exercises, which come with suggested answers, are best done using pen and paper. These exercises will not only help you to practise grammar but also to tie grammatical forms to real-world meaning.
What is "grammaring"?
When I decided to create a website based on the first version of this book, I wanted to find a unique domain name that would make it different from the hundreds of other grammar sites. In a moment of inspiration, the word "grammaring" occurred to me. At that time, I thought it was a non-existent term: a play on the noun "grammar" used as a verb. I felt the -ing form would reflect the idea that grammar should not merely be considered as a field of study but rather as an activity in which language learners are dynamically engaged. Thus, in 2009, I launched www.grammaring.com.
It was not until a few years later that, while browsing the Internet, I learned that "grammaring" was actually an existing term coined by Diane Larsen-Freeman well before my discovery. In her Teaching Language from Grammar to Grammaring, she defines it as the fifth skill (besides reading, writing, speaking and listening), something more than just an area of knowledge: "the ability to use grammar structures accurately, meaningfully and appropriately".
Although I did not have this exact definition in mind when I chose the domain name for the site, I thought it was very close to my understanding of grammar and so I decided to keep the name and later adopt it for the title of this book.
Acknowledgements
I started writing the first version of this book while I was teaching English grammar to English teacher trainees at the Juhász Gyula Teacher Training Faculty of the University of Szeged in Szeged, Hungary. I would like to thank all my students who have studied from this book since then for their useful feedback on the material. I am also grateful to my colleagues for their help and encouragement.
Special thanks go to my colleague Tibor Borbás, who worked with me in the initial stage of the project and contributed greatly to the first version of the text.
Finally, I would also like to thank the proofreader Thomas A. Williams for his meticulous corrections and helpful advice.
About the author
Péter Simon is a teacher of English as a foreign language and the creator of www.grammaring.com. He has been involved in the training of EFL teachers at the University of Szeged in Hungary, where he has offered various courses ranging from General English to English Grammar, Phonetics, Listening Skills, Reading Skills and Presentation Skills to FCE and CPE Exam Preparation. He has also taught Business English, Medical English and English for IT to students in a variety of professional training courses and has been an ERASMUS guest lecturer in Hamar (Norway), Istanbul (Turkey) and Klagenfurt (Austria). He is the co-author of International Business Communication, an online module in Business English developed at the University of Szeged. He is a certified TELC examiner in English, LCCI examiner in Business English, and City & Guilds interlocutor in English.
About the proofreader
Thomas A. Williams is an instructor at the Department of English Language Teacher Education and Applied Linguistics of the University of Szeged in Hungary, where he has taught courses in grammar and the four language skills as well as in translation, English for Academic Purposes, Academic Writing and Business English. His areas of interest include the link between culture(s) and language teaching and learning, task-based language teaching and learning, researching speaking and postmethod pedagogies. He has also seen an English test prep book and other writings of his in print.
Pretest
The following test contains 50 multiple choice questions related to various fields of English grammar covered in this book. For each question, choose the best answer from the three choices listed and note it down for yourself. The questions get harder as you progress, from beginner to advanced level. Don't worry if you don't know all the answers. At the end of the test you will find an answer key that also provides links to the chapters that will explain each answer for you.
Mary is ... teacher.
-
a
an
... go for a walk?
Would you like to
Would you like
Do you like
I ... in the morning.
drink a cup of tea usually
drink usually a cup of tea
usually drink a cup of tea
My sister ... in Canada.
live
lives