Question:
I have seen grammar books by Betty Azar, and they seem to be wonderful!
Does anyone have any opinion about her books? Do you have any English
grammar books that you love? I am almost ready to graduate, and am eager
to find good texts for any level of *adult* ESL
Answer:
I don't like Azar grammar books. I've had students who can do most of the
exercises of Azar, but still make hundreds of errors in speech and writing
in the same strutures. Teachers like Azar for different reasons. I have
colleagues who like it because it has millions of exercises and they can
fill up the class time by doing the exercises. Others are in love with the
grammar explanations.
Some students like the book too because they find the exercises easy to
do,and because, I suppose, it resembles the textbooks some of them used to
have in their native countries. But I have taught from those books at least
five times and I still don't like them. Here are some of my reasons:
1. Some of the charts, like the ones on tenses, are confusing to students.
2. The exercises are not authentic.
3. There are no communicative activities in the book.
4. A lot of the exercises are fill-in-the-blank exercises, which are
typically easy for students to do, but do not necessarily test the
students' understanding of the structure.
5. There are no conscious-raising activities in the book.
6. The book has a monotonous layout and is boring.
My favorite book so far is Focus on Grammar, at least the high intermediate
one.I think Focus on Grammar is something between Azar and Grammar
Dimensions, meaning that it contains traditional exercises, authentic
reading passages, and communicative activities.
What I wrote here about the Azar series is only my personal opinion. I hope
these comments would be helpful to Ms. Azar and the publisher in revising
the book.
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