Nobody ever got good at English by doing gap-fill exercises. 'Business English' is just a marketing term. Books and dictionaries teach you words nobody uses. 'If' is just a regular word with no special grammar.
Your English teacher and your grammar book are making your life too difficult.
If you can read this description, you can speak and write like a native English speaker, and you don’t need to memorize ‘Business English’ phrases and do hundreds of grammar exercises to do it. Relax, It’s Just English will show you that you already know most of the vocabulary and grammar you need to speak and write better English. There are no exercises, and you won’t find hundreds of rules and exceptions. Over 28 chapters, you will learn shortcuts through some of the trickiest and most important parts of using English, all in a fun and easy-to-read style designed to take some of the pain out of learning the language.
Writing work emails, managing tenses, and using the word 'if' are all covered in a simpler, more realistic way than most students of English have heard before, and many other overlooked topics are given needed attention. Perhaps most importantly, you'll unlearn some unnecessary rules you've been taught over the years. Less stress, more authentic language. Relax, it's just English.
About the Author Brett Vanderburg was born in Fresno, California and has been teaching English as a Foreign Language in Hamburg, Germany since 2005.
This book is such a great read! I learned that I should probably lighten up a little bit on the teacher expectations and focus on the big picture. I am a teacher who has taught many EL students in the K-8 grade range, and I absolutely agree that we often forget the main purpose of learning a new language: it's to be able to COMMUNICATE. So if students are able to get a point across in English, when their first language is something else, then maybe we shouldn't harp on them for a little "less than perfect" word order, grammar, verb tenses, or.....
This book is spot on with some specific strategies and is sprinkled with humorous phrases and comments that you probably will identify with. (See what I did there?? I ended a sentence with a preposition! Yikes!)
"Practice Makes Permanent," not Perfect! Encouragement and Practice go together like cake and ice cream!
Loved the idea that our every day American English is much simpler than what we’ve learned in school. But really got annoyed by the way the author despises ESL teachers…
As a French ESL speaker, I must say I didn't learn much here. But this read was a much deserved refreshing course about what really matters when talking to a native English speaker. Now, I'll actually make a few motivation posters for my classroom out of some quotes from the book!
As an ESL student I highly recommend it. I am 44 years old and I started studying English formally approximately 4 years ago. I really wanted to read it because of comments I had read online, but my local library did not have it available. I asked them to buy it and they immediately accepted my request. I think it is a great book to have available in the ESL section of any public library. Many of the things he raises are very helpful for people like me who are facing the challenge of learning English (perhaps a little over the ideal age).