English Grammar System

Understanding and Using English Grammar is a developmental skills text for intermediate to advanced English language learners.
It functions principally as a classroom teaching text but also serves as a comprehensive reference text for students and teachers.
Understanding and Using English Grammar takes a time-tested approach that blends direct grammar instruction with carefully sequenced practice to develop all language skills.
Grammar is viewed as an organizing system to help students make sense of the language they see and hear, rather than as a mere collection of rules.
This perspective provides a natural, logical framework for students to make English their own.
This edition has been extensively revised to keep pace with advances in theory and practice.
Every aspect of the previous edition was reviewed, including the charts, exercises, and sequencing of grammar points. We are excited to introduce significant new features and updates:
• New as well as updated grammar charts based on corpus research reflect current usage and highlight the differences between written and spoken English in informal and formal contexts.
• Pretests at the start of chapters let learners check what they already know and orient themselves to the chapter content.
• A wide range of thematic exercises provides opportunities for contextualized language use.
• A variety of new readings covers current topics, strategies for student success, study skills, and other academic and practical content.
• More meaning-based and step-by-step practice helps learners better grasp concepts underlying the target grammar.
• Article use (a, the, an) is now the focus of an entire chapter.
• New guided writing activities are supported by writing tips and editing tasks. • Self-study practice for gerunds and infinitives has been added, beginning with Chapter 1, so that students can learn at their own pace.
• A fresh design includes a generous use of photos to add interest and serve as the basis for fluency practice.
• A large increase in the number of exercises supports teachers who would prefer not to supplement.
• Three topics, absent in the Fourth Edition, are back in the Fifth Edition: The Subjunctive in Noun Clauses, Past Forms of Infinitives and Gerunds, and Using a Possessive to Modify a Gerund.