Practice Makes Perfect

vii

Introduction

Many people consider learning grammar a chore. And at times, it can be. But understanding the

grammar of any language is essential for becoming a skilled and accurate user of that language.

English is certainly no exception.

The rules of grammar for a language learner are like the rules of the road for a driver. In order

to be able to drive properly and maneuver with other drivers, you have to know the rules that

everyone goes by. Naturally, some people break the rules and make driving difficult for other

drivers. This is true of language, too. If you follow the rules of grammar, you can express yourself

clearly. But if you fail to observe those rules, people may find it difficult to understand you or

they may even misunderstand you entirely. So it’s really very important to understand and use

correct grammar.

But what is grammar? Funk and Wagnalls’s New College Standard Dictionarydescribes grammar as

“a type of science that explains the various principles of oral or written usage of a particular lan-

guage.” It is also said to be “the developed art of speaking or writing accurately in a particular

language.” Whether science or art, grammar is made up of the descriptions that tell you how to

use a language correctly. For example:

Description: Begin a sentence with doto change a statement to a question.

Usage:Statement = “You understand the problem.”

Question = “Doyou understand the problem?”

Or:

Description: Use heas the subject of a sentence; use himas the direct object.

Usage:Subject = “Heis a good friend of mine.”

Direct Object = “I visit himvery often.”

There are many such grammatical descriptions, and each one is a building block in the structure

of your knowledge of how to form and use English correctly. The greater the number of build-

ing blocks that you master, the greater your accuracy with the spoken and written language will

be.

Standard grammaris composed of the traditional rules for English. It is what grammarians and

English professors wanteveryone to use when they speak and write. But a language evolves over

time, and the traditional rules sometimes seem out of step with what is going on in the English-

speaking world. The more current or popular usages can be called casual language. That’s what

people really say in their everyday lives and is often in direct contradiction with standard gram-

mar. As an illustration, in standard grammar you should use whoas the subject of a sentence and

use whomwhen it is used as an object. But that’s not always the case in casual language. For

example:

Standard grammar: “Whomdid you visit in New York?”

Casual language: “Whodid you visit in New York?”

00 (i-viii) frontmatter 11/3/04 1:41 PM Page vii

Copyright © 2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Click here for terms of use.