An Everyday English Course for foreign students [antikvár]

PREFACE IN this book an attempt has been made to give the beginner the foundation of a thorough knowledge of the English of to-day. In the grammar lessons the essentials of English grammar have been explained in the simplest possible form, and the amount of grammar given in each lesson ought to be well within the capacity of the average student. But, as every teacher knows, a mere explanation of a grammatical point is not nearly sufficient for nine pupils out of ten. For this reason copious exercises accompany each lesson. In these all the work of the lesson is hammered home. These exercises can be written by pupils or done orally, and though it is left to the discretion of the teacher whether all the exercises or oniy a few selected ones are set, it is, 1 think, advisable that at least a portion of the dictation exercise that follows each conversation should be written. A special feature of this book is the series of conversations that, from Lesson 10, alternate with the grammar lessons. The aim has been to make the book colloquial, to give the language of everyday as it is familiarly spoken by the manin-the-street. Though a few of the generally used slang expressions appear, slang has, on the whole, been avoided, not from any feeling of pedantic purism but chiefly because nothing in language is so transitory as the vast majority of our slang words ; and, by the time the foreign student has mastered the latest expressions, they have been superseded by somé equally ephemeral successors. So here the reader will meet people gossiping in the garden, discussing London traffic, busy with housework, catching a train, engaging rooms in a hotel, buying clothes, or going for a holiday, talking together always in " Everyday English." It is suggested that in these conversations the students should take the parts of the various characters and read (or, better still, learn and repeat) them as naturally as possible. In the first few lessons the vocabulary has necessarily been drawn from the objects found in the classroom or admitting of easy demonstration, and while the student is grappling with new constructions, the vocabulary has been strictly