Michael Swan - Practical English Usage

Third Edition

OXFORD

UNIVERSITY PRESS

OXFORD University Press

Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.

It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto.

With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam.

OXFORD and OXFORD ENGLISH are registered trade marks of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries

Michael Swan 2005

The moral lights of the author have been asserted

Database right Oxford University Press (maker)

First published 2005

2009 2008 2007 2006

10 9 8 7 6 5 4

No unauthorized photocopying

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization.

Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the ELT Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above.

You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Any websites referred to in this publication are in the public domain and their addresses are provided by Oxford University Press for information only.

Oxford University Press disclaims any responsibility for the content

ISBN-13: 9780194420990 (hardback)

ISBN-10: 019442099 X

ISBN-13: 978 0194420983 (paperback)

ISBN-10: 0194420981

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Contents Overview

Language Terminology

Don't say it: 130 common mistakes

Phonetic alphabet

Practical English Usage

Index

English, like all languages, is full of problems for the foreign learner. Some of these points are easy to explain - for instance, the formation of questions, the difference between since and for, the meaning of after all. Other problems are more tricky, and cause difficulty even for advanced students and teachers. How exactly is the present perfect used? When do we use past tenses to be polite? What are the differences between at, on and in with expressions of place? We can say a chair leg - why not *a cat leg? When can we use the expression do so? When is the used with superlatives? Is unless the same as if not? What are the differences between come and go, between each and every, between big, large and great, between fairly, quite, rather and pretty? Is it correct to say There's three more bottles in the fridge? How do you actually say 3 x 4 = 12? And so on, and so on.

Practical English Usage is a guide to problems of this kind. It deals with over 600 points which regularly cause difficulty to foreign students of English. It will be useful, for example, to a learner who is not sure how to use a particular structure, or who has made a mistake and wants to find out why it is wrong. It will also be helpful to a teacher who is looking for a clear explanation of a difficult language point. There is very full coverage of grammar, as well as explanations of a large number of common vocabulary problems. There are also some entries designed to clarify more general questions (e.g. formality, slang, the nature of standard English and dialects) which students and teachers may find themselves concerned with.

The book is intended for higher level students of English and for teachers. Being a reference book, it contains information at various levels, ranging from relatively simple points to quite advanced problems.

Problems are mostly explained in short separate entries: the book is more like a dictionary than a grammar in form. This makes it possible to give a clear complete treatment of each point, and enables the user to concentrate just on the question that he or she needs information about. Entries that deal with related topics (e.g. different uses of a tense) are grouped where this is useful, but can be read separately. In longer entries, basic information is generally given first, followed by more detailed explanations and discussions of less important points. Entries are arranged alphabetically by title and numbered in sequence. A comprehensive Index shows where each point can be found (see 'How to find things').

I have tried to make the presentation as practical as possible. Each entry contains an explanation of a problem, examples of correct usage, and (when this is useful) examples of typical mistakes. In some cases, an explanation may be somewhat different from that found in many learners' grammars; this is because speech) are not always accurate or helpful. Explanations are, as far as possible, in simple everyday language. Where it has been necessary to use grammatical terminology, I have generally preferred to use traditional terms that are simple and easy to understand, except where this would be seriously misleading. Some of these terms (e.g. future tense) would be regarded as unsatisfactory by academic grammarians, but I am not writing for specialists. There is a dictionary of the terminology used in the book on pages xvii-xxv.