A Handy Book on English Grammar

This was published in 2011 by Scitech Publications. The copyright is with me.

You may find the following interesting. If you do, please recommend this to a publisher in your area.

Thanks in advance.

my email ID: kolilakh29@gmail.com
phone: 9840327279

Thank you for buying this Book or browsing through this in a bookshop.

You may groan, ‘Oh, not another one!’ But be patient with me and read this preface.

Yes, there are ever so many books on English grammar in the market, then why another one? What can this Book have others don’t? Well, read on.

You are a student (school/college—Thamizh/English medium)? You are a parent?

You are a teacher (school/college)? You are one who needs to use English correctly? All of you will find this Book useful, informative, engaging, even exciting.

There is so much to learn, so much to know. It’s not just parts of speech and sentence patterns—SVOOCA—this Book introduces you to. It does much more. Because there is so much that English as a language offers. See the Content pages. You’ll realize this Book offers much more than any other book in the market. The more you know how English expresses thoughts, the more enjoyable this learning experience becomes.

Yet, everyone of you will be at different stages of learning English. I realise this and I’ve provided the wealth of English usage accordingly. I’ve divided this wealth into three levels: basic, intermediate and advanced. Basic is the key you’ll use to enjoy the ground floor of this (your!) house of knowledge, Intermediate is the staircase you’ll climb to enjoy the first floor, Advanced is another staircase you’ll climb to enjoy the second floor open to the heavens—the sun, the moon, the stars, and the clear blue sky.

What is grammar? You may say it’s a bag full of dos and don’ts. I won’t blame you because that is the impression or feeling every non-native student of English had or has. You’ve learnt the grammar of your tongue right from the time you were in your mother’s womb, you hear it everywhere all the time, you speak and write it all the time. This is not the case with English. Do you hear it used around you—in your home, in your street, in your school, in shops, in public places? No, you don’t. Yet, English is very important to you for various reasons. You have to learn to use English. How do you do that? From grammar lessons, from English textbooks, from fiction, from films, from TV channels.

Grammar is no more than a mirror; it records how people have been using a language they call theirs. I can call to mind two classic examples: 1. The use of plural pronoun for a singular noun like ‘everyone’ (see 4.199—concord) and 2. Ending a sentence with a preposition; you’ll read the classic instance of Winston Churchill frowning over the corrections his secretary made.

Grammar is not a villain, it’s a friend, I tell you. For the simple reason, this Book just provides information on how native users use English in speech and writing, how they put nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions in certain ways, how they form sentences and questions.

Your mother knows the recipe for Idly, Dosa, puttu, fish or chicken curry. Suppose you ask her to cook food the Mexican way or the Chinese way, she has to look for a recipe. You know the recipe for how to use your mother tongue. But to use English the English way, you have to look for a recipe. Grammar is that recipe. Use it, you’ll soon become a chef! God bless you! 

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