Explaining English Grammar

Oxford Handbooks for Language Teachers

by George Yule

A guide to explaining grammar for teachers of English as a second or foreign language.

Having to explain a grammar point can be daunting for teachers. The kinds of explanations that will help language students aren't always the ones you will find in a traditional, 'academic' grammar book or guide. Instead, Explaining English Grammar is a pedagogical guide, designed to help explain the 'whys' as well as the 'hows' of English grammar.

The book is organized into ten chapters. Each chapter covers a specific grammar topic. After an introductory chapter, the topics covered are:
- Articles
- Tense and aspect
- Modals
- Conditionals
- Prepositions and particles
- Indirect objects
- Infinitives and gerunds
- Relative clauses
- Direct and indirect speech

This sequence is designed to cover the more basic topics first, and then to go into more complex areas. However, the chapters are also free-standing, so you can read them in any order - or leave some out - if you prefer.

Each chapter has a similar structure.

- First there is a section that describes and gives examples of basic forms and structures. These descriptions and examples are based on Corpus research, which makes it possible to say that one form is typically used more often than another in real texts.

- The next section moves on to look at how we use different structures to convey different basic meanings. These descriptions draw on research in semantics.

- Finally, there is a section on 'meaning in context' - in other words, the ways in which these meanings are affected by the context in which they are used, and how they are used to convey information. Again, this section is informed by research in both pragmatics and discourse analysis.

You can find additional information - and references to the research studies referred to - in 'Further reading' sections at the end of each chapter.

Also, after each section, there are summary boxes of the main points, followed by exercises that you can do on your own and/ or discuss with fellow trainees. (There are answers to these questions in an Appendix.) At the end of each chapter, there is a section containing discussion topics and projects for further investigation, and another section with ideas for classroom exercises, activities, and tasks.

Genres: Linguistics, Language

333 pages, Paperback

First published November 12, 1998

About the author

George Yule has worked as an English teacher in Britain, Canada, Jamaica, and Saudi Arabia. He has also taught Applied Linguistics in the Universities of Edinburgh, Hawaii, Louisiana State and Minnesota.

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was all about grammar. Every nuance of language, every reason why we only use certain words in certain places - this book had it all. I thought I knew grammar fairly well, or at least, particular aspects of grammar, but after reading a chapter about articles or prepositions I realized that I couldn't explain it as easily as I thought. This book did a good job of confusing me and I was glad we discussed it in class because then it would start to make more sense. Yule is trying to explain grammar from a different perspective. If you grew up learning English than this grammar is innate and you automatically use certain words because that is how you heard other people speaking. But if you are trying to teach it to someone else than you have to try and explain why you only use these words. It was helpful, but usually gave me a headache before it did any good. It's a good book for TEFL majors.

*Taken from my book reviews blog: http://reviewsatmse.blogspot.com/2010...

[Crystal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this book as a present for completing a survey for Oxford University Press. It is a good introduction to confusing grammar points for teachers, but most of the suggested classroom applications were things I was already doing. Still, I'll give George Yule credit for explaining the ryhme and reason behind seemingly arbitrary facets of English grammar, even though most of the explanations would overwhelm students.

[Carla Hahn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Learned a heckuva lot about grammar - though I'm a textbook editor and have been teaching grammar for 25+ years. It's a tough read, but worth the time invested.

[Hussain · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best English grammar books for teachers.

[Mervat Emad · Rating 5 out of 5]

very good

[Cheryl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not bad but still old-school ways of thinking and teaching grammar.

[Trenton Judson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think overall it is a decent book on grammar that is geared toward understanding and teaching second-language learners. There are times that I definitely felt overwhelmed by the concepts being thrown at me, but that is most likely because grammar isn't my strong suit. I did enjoy the theoretical portions and the last chapters which incorporated literature more.
Where the book could use some revision is towards the middle and end of the book, there is no comprehensive explanations of tables, leaving the reader playing catch up with key concepts.
Also, there really should be an answer key somewhere to the exercises in the discussion topic areas, otherwise, how do we know if we did them right?