Mark Lester - Practice Makes Perfect Advanced English Grammar for ESL Learners

PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT
Advanced English Grammar for ESL Learners

Mark Lester Copyright 2011 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. ISBN: 978-0-07-174333-4 MHID: 0-07-174333-2 The material in this eBook also appears in the print version of this title: ISBN: 978-0-07-159879-8, MHID: 0-07-159879-0. All trademarks are trademarks of their respective owners.

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Practice Makes Perfect: Advanced English Grammar for ESL Learners is designed to help advanced-level learners gain control over difficult areas of English grammar. This book is not a systematic treatment of all areas of English grammar. Instead, it deals in depth with selected grammar topics that pose special problems for nonnative speakers. These topics fall into two areas: (1) areas of grammar that are the source of persistent error and (2) areas of grammar that are so complex that even advanced nonnative speakers almost always avoid them.

Examples of the first type of persistent error would be using wrong articles, misusing the present and present progressive tenses, confusing present and past participles of verbs used as adjectives, and using the wrong relative pronoun in adjective clauses. Examples of the second type of constructions that are avoided because of their complexity would be gerunds and infinitives used as nouns, participial phrases, and wh- infinitive phrases. Each topic is explained in detail, often going far beyond what would be found in a more general grammar book. My hope is that by fully understanding the technical grammatical issues involved, you will feel much more confident in using these difficult constructions. Each bit of grammatical analysis is supported by a series of practice exercises that will help you gain practical control over the issues covered in the analysis.

Most regular nouns form their plural spelling by adding -s to the singular form. Most regular nouns form their plural spelling by adding -s to the singular form.

For example: If the regular plural is pronounced as a separate syllable rhyming with fizz, the regular plural is spelled -es. For example: There is a special spelling rule for the plural of words that end in a consonant + y: change the y to i and add -es. For example: However, if the y follows a vowel, the y is part of the spelling of the vowel and cannot be changed. For example: EXERCISE 1.1Write the correct form of the plural in the second column. The first question is done as an example.

The regular plural has three different pronunciations: /s/, /z/, and /z/ (rhymes with fizz). Which one we use is totally governed by the sound that immediately precedes it according to the following three rules: If the singular noun ends in a voiceless consonant sound (except a voiceless sibilant sound like the s in bus orNext page