Intermediate Swedish: A Grammar and Workbook

by Ian Hinchliffe, Philip Holmes

Intermediate A Grammar and Workbook combines an accessible intermediate reference grammar and related exercises in one volume that covers most of the topics that students might expect to deal with in their second year of learning Swedish. The book follows on naturally from and complements its companion volume, Basic Swedish. Each of the 26 units discusses one or more grammar topics, with examples that are subsequently practised in the exercises that follow. The book presents the contemporary language against a backdrop of Swedish culture, society, geography, customs and history. Each unit ends with a cultural text which outlines an aspect of Swedish culture and, in nearly all cases, exemplifies and consolidates the grammar topic examined in the unit. Features • clear grammatical explanations with examples in Swedish and English • vocabulary based on a major corpus of written Swedish in order to guarantee authenticity and relevance • cross-references to other units • over 100 exercises with a key to all the correct answers. The book is suitable both for independent study and for class use. It can be used by intermediate students and those who have grasped the basics of grammar and vocabulary.

188 pages, Paperback

Published March 14, 2019

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

Routledge’s “Basic X: A Grammar and Workbook” and “Intermediate X: A Grammar and Workbook” together add up to about a B1 level of the language concerned, as evaluated by university courses or official state exams. They are not textbooks, and a student will need to have already worked through a textbook with dialogues in order to understand how to actually use the language in practice. Instead, each chapter only presents anew some aspect of grammar and then drills on it. Therefore, they are only complementary resources when one has already learned the language elsewhere.

This set for Swedish is representative of the series. The approach initially seemed more or less what I was looking for, since I learned Swedish to a B1 level during university studies in Finland, and I mainly wanted to ensure that I had not forgotten anything. However, these two volumes combined feel skimpy compared to the massive exercise sets available for other languages. In spite of covering what they need to cover, they are bad value. The last chapters of the Intermediate Swedish volume get into some fairly intricate matters of syntax, but the book is over before you know it, and I didn’t get the amount of drilling that I needed to internalize this material.

[Carter · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Routledge series on grammar, has been a godsend; I have been attempting in the last couple years, to vastly expand, my reading coverage. This series has been a vast help. Useful with the appropriate bilingual dictionary, plus perhaps one in the original language. Recommended.