The word ‘grammar’ can strike terror into the heart of student and teacher alike. It can conjure up visions of dry and dusty textbooks in classrooms long ago; of painful attempts to memorize acres of seemingly pointless declensions and conjugations; of losing battles fought with the mysteries of syntax or parsing. Yet the study of grammar need not be painful, intimidating or dull, as this new book on English grammar clearly shows.

The book’s front cover says:

Grammar in practice from the word to the text

and this phrase sums up both the book’s content and its unique strengths. The author takes us systematically through the structure of the language from the basic building blocks – word and word class – to groups, clauses and sentences, and finally to connected text. She explains clearly and interestingly what these things are and what they do, and in doing so, shows how the language works. Each of these explanations is followed by an activity based on the points made in the explanation; the range of activities is varied in both type and level of difficulty. The book also covers word formation, word families, compounds and collocation, and there is a useful glossary of grammar terms, plus an index.

The book is divided into five parts. The first two deal with word class: first the main groups (nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs), then the grammatical word classes (pronouns, determiners and so on). In each case, there is an explanation of the word class’ function – the ‘work’ that it does – followed by an analysis of its main features. So the section on adjectives, for example, starts by explaining that adjectives give various types of information about a person or thing, and then goes on to look at their position and order, and at comparatives and superlatives. There is a final section on using adjectives to add detail and precision to writing, with a warning against their overuse.

The third part of the book, Forming Words and Phrases, looks at word families (both form-based and meaning-based), compounds, collocation and phrases, while the fourth focuses on the ways in which words come together to form groups and clauses. The fifth and final part describes the different types of sentences – simple, compound and so on – and shows how sentences are joined together to make texts. Each step of every chapter is illustrated with examples taken from a large corpus of real English, giving the text a natural and interesting feel quite unlike that of most grammar textbooks.

The focus throughout is on the English language as it really is, a living and changing entity, and on how students can learn to use it correctly and accurately in order to communicate. There is plenty of sound advice on appropriateness, common errors, standard and non-standard English, language change and punctuation. Cartoons are used to reinforce language points.

The book is intended for use in UK schools, and in particular for students aged between 11 and 16, and their teachers. The fact that it is aimed principally at a native speaker audience makes it unsuitable for lower level EFL students. However its clarity and user-friendliness would make it suitable for students in countries where English is the medium of education, as well as for advanced EFL learners. It would also be useful for any teacher who is not an expert on grammar and who occasionally confuses prepositions with adverbs, or can’t recall exactly what the difference is between a clause and a sentence. And let’s face it, that means most of us!