An Advanced English Course for Foreign Students [antikvár]

PREFATORY NOTE During the course of some ten years devoted to the teaching of English to foreign students, I have noticed that, while there are a large number of fairly good elementary textbooks for foreigners, there is a real need for an advanced course which will help pupils to understand and use the more complicated grammatical constructions, the idiomatic expressions, and the compound verbs. By " compound " verbs, I mean those whose meaning is modified or completely changed by the addition of one or more prepositions or prepositional adverbs. I have found that while, on the one hand, the average foreign pupil is often able to express himself fairly correctly in a kind of over-simplified " foreigners' English," he is, on the other hand, generally quite incapable of reading an English novel or play, or of understanding an ordinary conversation properly. He will puzzle over a sentence like " John dropped in this evening," quite unaware that " to drop in " is a group with a meaning quite apart from that of the words taken separately ; and he is completely floored by idiomatic expressions like " to burn the candle at both ends," or, " to come off with flying colours." Moreover, no matter how well they have been taught at home, I have found few foreigners able to express themselves correctly when they attempt anything more complicated than the simplest grammatical constructions. I feel that this is due to a defect of method in their teaching. Most grammars begin with the treatment of the noun, followed in succession by that of the adjective,