My C2 Proficiency book review: Grammar Nonsense and What To Do about It



Most writing prompts in the C2 Proficiency writing test consist of three points. One problem I often see in students' answers is that the answer is three isolated pieces, rather than one complete whole.

In this book review I wrote for my C2 Proficiency Writing students, I was aiming to show how the answer can be connected on the level of the whole text and be one complete whole. The prompt was written by me too. 

An ELT magazine has invited readers to submit reviews of books for teachers. You decide to submit a review of a book that you read recently. Your review should briefly describe the book, explain what impact it had on your professional life, and assess the importance of reading professional literature.

✽✽✽

I am not big on reading books about teaching, guilty as charged, but when this book came out, I bought it on the first day and binge-read it in two hours. “Grammar Nonsense and What To Do about It” by Hugh Dellar and Andrew Walkley is not a book. It’s a rant, a rant about the sorry state of affairs of the modern ELT industry.

Grammar, Dellar and Walkley lament, can not, must not, should not be taught through castrated examples that are shoehorned into a set of long-established topics no one ever dares to challenge. Grammar, they explain, is inextricably linked to context and as such can not, must not, should not be taught through convoluted rules that no student understands anyway. With ruthless sarcasm, they meticulously expose the absurdity of the rules that ring too familiar to teachers and learners alike - reported speech, stative verbs, future forms, relative clauses. The list goes on.

Having read that, you might jump in excitement and rush to buy the book too. Don’t. Granted, what Dellar and Walkley say makes, unlike the grammar rules, perfect sense. Written in a conversational style, sarcastic at times, the book is an effortless read too. One crucial component that is lacking is the answer to one big huge question: “Right, but what am I to do about it?” Regretfully, the book did not equip me with any practical tools I can try out in class. The “what to do about it” part is just not there. The absurdity will go on.

Perhaps, I am right about not being big on reading books about teaching. What difference can a book make in the classroom? The authors rant, question, argue. So what? It’s not the authors who are in the classroom. It’s not the authors who face the tricky questions or blank looks. It’s us, the grassroots teachers. Perhaps, what we can, must, should do instead of reading is be present, be aware, be alert, and do the best we can possibly do for the student that is in front of us, as platitudinous as it sounds.

✽✽✽

So how did I connect the piece on the level of the whole text? Did I do a good job? 

Disclaimer: Please note that while the review does represent my opinion, I have mildly exaggerated some aspects for the purpose of producing a good exam piece rather than a real review. 

Image credit: Photo by Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to tame your IELTS pie charts

Image
IELTS line graphs are easy to tame - you just go chronologically, so the description doesn't get out of hand. Information in pie charts, however, can be hard to organize because there are different directions you can go in. In this post, I want to share two IELTS pie chart answers I wrote for the same task. The task is from Cambridge IELTS 11 . The introduction and the overview are the same. As you read, pay attention to the organization and try to decide which description works better. ✼✼✼ Introduction  The pie charts compare the percentage of British students of one English university who knew foreign languages in 2000 and 2010. Main Body Version 1 The percentage of students in three groups grew. Speakers of Spanish formed the largest share in both years, rising by 5% from 30% to 35%. The increase was the same in the “Another language” and “Two other languages” groups. In 2010, the former amounted to 20%, while the latter comprised 15%, making up the second and third largest prop
Read more

Top 8 mistakes Russian learners of English actually make

Image
Due to the nature of my job, every once in a while I stumble upon an article about N most common mistakes that learners of English make. I look at them and go, “Who makes these mistakes? Russians certainly don’t.” (For example, Russians don’t confuse your and you’re .) In this post, I want to talk about 8 common mistakes Russian learners actually make. These mistakes persist on different levels, but are not usually addressed in EFL course books. The list is based on my personal teaching experience. The order is random. 1. I with I often ask students “What did you do at the weekend?” and what I hear is “ I with my friends went to the cinema. ” The right way to say something like this is “ My friends and I went to the cinema ,” or “ I went to the cinema with my friends .” In English, the word order is “subject+verb” and prepositional phrases can’t go in the middle. 2. How to say When students don’t know how to say something, they ask me or murmur to themselves “ How t
Read more

My Fulbright application or a teachable moment on essay writing

Image
I did it one day before the deadline. I submitted my Fulbright application on 30 May 2014. Now, 14 months later, I am going to the USA as a proud Fulbrighter! The program I am participating in is called Foreign Language Teaching Assistant or FLTA for short. As a participant of this program I will be teaching Russian and studying at an American university for an academic year. When my students heard the news, they asked, “What did it take to get this grant?” I replied, “Well, there were several stages. First, I had to write a lot of text. Then, I … .” And one student said, “I am curious to read what you wrote.” I suppose many are, so I am going to let you in on one of my application essays. One of the essays I wrote is called “Objectives and motivations.” What I wrote is too long to upload here (1274 words, no less!), so I am only going to share my introduction and conclusion . Oh, and I see a teachable moment here, which I just can’t help using. Introduction "Albe
Read more

C2 Proficiency. Writing Task 2. Review (of a film I haven’t seen).

Image
I keep writing like crazy because I am preparing for the C2 Proficiency test (fka CPE). In my previous post, I shared my Writing Part 2 article . In this post, I want to share a review I wrote about a movie I haven't seen and give some insights into handling an unfortunate task. Task A film magazine has invited readers to submit reviews of films which are set in the future, but deal with themes relevant to today’s world, such as our relationship with technology or environmental problems. You decide to submit a review briefly describing such a film and explaining why its themes are relevant today. You should also consider how important it is for films set in the future to say something about contemporary society.   ( Cambridge English Proficiency 2 , Test 2, Question 4). This is a really unfortunate task for me because I watch very few movies, maybe 3 a year. But as I read it, I imagined myself sitting in the exam room not wanting to fail, so I had to come up with somethin
Read more