Collins Cobuild English Grammar

Very useful

Thank you so much. I love Cobuild! This is the best English Grammar textbook for Japanese, I guess. Great, great!

tythe book very nice

This book gives a thorough grounding in grammar. Beginning first with a very good glossary, so that the reader can go straight to the term they want to learn, before then moving on to give examples of words (nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs) in all their varieties, with any complexities made as simple as possible to understand. This is done through lots of relevant examples so the reader or student of grammar can come to grips with their meaning and usage. At the end of the book there is a reference section provided for further clarity, again with many germane examples given.Cobuild English Grammar is a rather large book and for me it is to be used for reference as there many occasions when I need to clarify certain aspects of language. Where it falls short is that it doesn’t always give certain usages of English language, such as whether it is okay to use ‘also’ instead of ‘too’ at the end of a sentence and, if so, which is more accurate and which less so.It is a book that I would suggest should be used in conjunctions with other books, so that the person gets a real feel of language, for being perfectly accurate all the time with one’s grammar can often, in my view, seem slightly stilted. Language often needs a certain amount of flexibility to sound natural. Two books that give a flavour of this are: Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style and Gwynne’s Grammar, which also contains the classic text by William Strunk: The Elements of Style.Grammar is not the be-all and end-all of communication. An overall appreciation of language’s natural ‘flow’ can often be more appealing to the ear than a person who is constantly worrying about every sentence they write or speak, fearing it may deviate from the rules of formal grammar.Most writers would probably agree that some errors are a little more acceptable today than they were in the past. The occasional splitting of the infinitive or the ending of a sentence with a preposition may indeed be breaking the rules of grammar, but so long as the meaning remains intact, such incorrect usage should not necessarily be frowned upon.Finally, although my kindle version works very well, I have noticed that a few of the main headings run off the page and are not visible. This, however, is only a small inconvenience as it’s not too much trouble to work out the wording of the text. Even so, I am hoping that a future, updated version will correct this.I hope you find my review helpful.

Good

Nice book to read

Not read all of it yet, but so far seems to meet expectations.

Was a bit tricky to get used to but it's a good reference.