Grammar and idiom [antikvár]

PREFACE Many educationists agree that skill in reading is the most profitable acquirement for students of a foreign language, and that to teach them to speak and write accurately is, for the majority, very difficult, if not impossible. But it is a written examination that most students have to face ; and public examinations are of supreme importance to them, affecting, as they generally do, their entrance to the various University faculties, their chances of employment and their subsequent careers. It is not surprising that the eyes of both students and teachers are firmly fixed on these written examinations; and in them it is not so much reading ability that is tested as skill and accuracy in the active use of the language. This book is an attempt to teach the construction of English sentences, the commoner English idioms, and the avoidance of those errors to which the non-English student is prone. Some grammar is included, but only a few technical grammatical terms are used. In the examples and exercises, the attention of the student is not distracted by vocabulary difficulties. Having studied English for six or seven years, he is assumed to be familiar with several thousand words. This book is intended to give him practice in the construction of accurate