Running Head: TARGETED STUDENTS AND RATIONALITY OF THE TEXTBOOK

Targeted students and rationality of the textbook

Mengzi Cai

Colorado State University

TARGETED STUDENTS AND RATIONALITY OF THE TEXTBOOK

Mengzi Cai
E515
Grammar book review
Reppen, R. & Gorden, D. (2012). Grammar and Beyond Level 2 Student's Book.
Cambridge University Press

Targeted students and rationality of the textbook

Grammar and Beyond is a series which focuses on beginning to advanced-level

students. This paper evaluates the second book of this series which targets the students of
level 2. The students are low-intermediate to intermediate level. It includes the grammar
structure which are commonly used in North American English. Listening, speaking,
reading, and writing skills are all included in the context of this book and this book puts
emphasis on the application of the grammar structures to academic writing. In addition,
the grammar of this book is based on research of grammar in North American English,
which is taken from college lectures, textbooks, academic essays, high school
classrooms, and conversations between students and teachers. The grammar in this book
is tested against the Cambridge International Corpus and the grammar reflects actual
usage of North American English. The book uses the analysis of corpus data to discover
the useful points for students. Students would know the common mistakes made by most
of English learners, and this book also makes students correct the errors. Also, the book
lists the vocabulary which is in high frequency in English academic texts. In addition, this
book is used at INTO CSU for level 2 students. The knowledge in this book is applied in
the real classroom in which I observed several times. In addition, I have evaluated this
textbook based on the theoretical and pedagogical ways in my SLA final project.
Therefore, this book is worthwhile for further evaluation through the lens of the
parameters of this paper.

Contents of the textbook

This textbook contains 32 units and it divides these units into 11 parts. There are
four parts which are related to the tense-aspect system, including the present, the past, the
present perfect, and the future. Both the topics of “Nouns, Determiners, and Pronouns”
and “Adjectives, Adverbs, and Prepositions” take up three units. The rest of the contents
of this book introduce “Modal Verbs and Modal-like Expressions”, “Verbs + Preposition
and Phrasal Verbs”, “Comparatives and Superlatives”, “Gerunds and Infinitives”, and
“Clauses and Conjunctions”.

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TARGETED STUDENTS AND RATIONALITY OF THE TEXTBOOK

After the main body of this book, there are 15 appendices which serves as a
supplements for the previous units. For example, this part concludes the Phrasal verb:
Transitive and Intransitive in which it categorizes the phrasal verbs to transitive and
intransitive. It provides more information for students to learn.

Evaluative criteria

The important point of the design of English textbook is that the textbook could
help students to receive information and increase language acquisition. More precisely,
the sections designed in this textbook is for developing students’ awareness of the
English grammar and teaching students to use the grammar knowledge. Therefore, the
sequence, context and content play important roles in the design of the textbook and I
would use these elements to make my evaluation. Besides, the authors also focus on the
sequence, context and content in the design of this. Specifically, I will focus on three
elements to evaluate the knowledge presentation as form, meaning and use. Form takes
high value in a language learning because forms in different languages might be different
and language leaners should learn how to recognize the form of language in very
beginning of the learning. Form-meaning connection could help students to learn
grammar more efficiently because students would understand and remember the grammar
accurately when they know the meaning. Usage is one purpose of grammar leaning.
Students should know how to apply the grammar to speaking, reading, listening and
writing.

The sequence, content, and context of organization

I will evaluate two aspects of organization in this book: chapters and units. In the
design of the chapters, the design is: 1. The present; 2. The past; 3. Nouns, determiners,
and pronouns; 4. The present perfect; 5. Adjectives, adverbs, and preposition; 6. The
future; 7. Modal verbs and modal-like expressions; 8. verbs +preposition and phrasal
verbs; 9. Comparatives and superlatives; 10. Gerunds and infinitives; 11. Clauses and
conjunctions. I think the sequence of this content follows the learning process from easy
to difficult and high frequency usage to low frequency usage. This book introduces the
tense-aspect system, part of speech, clauses and phrase, which take up the important part
of the English grammar. However, I think the chapters one, two, four and six which are
the present, the past, the present perfect and the future should be put together more
cohesively because they are related to the tense and aspect system. However, this book
separates the tense and aspect system. What’s more, the units in each chapter are
designed according to increasing difficulty. For example, unit 1 in chapter one the present

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is simple present and unit 2 in this chapter adds one more knowledge of aspect (present
progressive and simple present). Unit 3 in this chapter aims at making students use
imperatives with time clauses. Students follow the routine of low difficulty to high
difficulty and it would help them to have efficiency of learning English. In each unit, the
first part is Grammar in the Real Word, which provides a recent realistic context with the
presentation of the unit’s grammar. In the realistic context, the authors bold the phrases
or words which are related to the grammar (e.g. unit 1 simple present: In today’s buy
world, people spend a lot of time with computers, and they spend less and less time with
people. Does this change how people interact with family and friends?) Contemporary
and interesting texts help students to raise their interest to read. The boldfaced words
could remind students of the grammar and students would pay more attention to the
grammar.
The next activity is a comprehension check which provides the test for the
understanding of the reading. Notice Activity is designed for students to relate the form,
meaning and use of the grammar. For instance, in the notice activity of unit 6 (past
progressive), the sentence is presented as: I watched/was watching TV with my family
when the millennium arrived and students are asked to find the sentence in the reading
and circle the correct words. The reading used the past progressive so students should
circle the phrase in past progressive. During this practice, students would remember the
form of past progressive and understand the meaning of the past progressive according to
the whole reading. Besides, they could learn how to use the past progressive by practicing
several sentences in this activity.
Next is the grammar presentation which lists the summary of the grammar in this
units. In unit 4, it lists the subject + verb+-ed (regular verbs) and the subject +irregular
verb in charts. The charts also provide the form, meaning and use of the grammar, using
guidelines and examples. Students would have a clear framework of the grammar by
studying in this part.
Some units provide the part of data from the real world. This part in unit 4 offers
the different usages between didn’t and did not. Did not is used more frequently in formal
writing but less frequently in conversation. Both teachers and students would know the
use of the grammar in authentic situations, like spoken and written use in this word.
Theme-related exercises follow the introduction of grammar and could reinforce
students’ understanding of the knowledge. The exercise 1 in unit 8 asks students to circle
the correct words to complete the sentences about people’s media habits (e.g. A/An recent
study showed a/an change in media habits.) Exercise 2 uses four pictures and there are
two questions below the picture. All the questions are designed to ask students to
distinguish a and the. Students have to fill in the blank in exercise three and choose the
article a/an, the or no article in the blank. In this part, students have to distinguish the

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usage of articles and learn how to use articles. With the variety of exercises in different
topics, students would be willing to keep continue to engage in the practice. When I
observed a class studying this section, the instructor had discussion with students about
the exercise and students came up with their answers as well as ideas on the topics which
attracted students’ attention and helped them engage with the class and discussions.
The Avoid Common Mistakes section plays a great part in the unit. It provides the
errors according to the research in students’ writing. The rules are listed at first and the
wrong examples with correction are provided to explain the rule (e.g. A singular count
noun needs a determiner. I do not have (a) card for this store.). Providing the wrong
sentence could help students to find whether they have the similar mistakes. For example,
most Chinese students are confused about the usage of articles and if the instructor only
taught the rule for them, they might not understand the grammar clearly. The wrong
example with the correction enables students to figure out what problem they would
make. After studying the common mistakes, students have to apply this knowledge in the
part of editing tasks that correct the wrong forms from the text.
The Grammar for Writing part gives a chance for students to apply the grammar
in writing. It divided into three parts. One is summarizing the grammar and giving
example: Use the simple past when the action or event was completed at a definite time
or times in the past, or the time of the action is important: Marcela took five classes last
semester. It was very stressful. The second is pre-writing. It gives a model for students to
analyze the grammar in writing (e.g. underline the count nouns and circle the noncount
noun in an article). The final part is to let students apply the grammar they learned in this
unit to the writing task.

The specific grammar topic and the approaches

I choose unit nine in this book which introduces the pronouns which are
connected to the reference and possessive chapter that I will analyze in The Grammar
Book. I will analyze this chapter through its appropriateness of dealing with the three
dimensions of form, meaning and use.
First of all, this unit provides an article whose title is Challenging Ourselves. In
this article, the author bolds the pronouns, including subject pronouns, object pronouns,
reflexive pronouns and possessive determiners and pronouns. In this way, students would
focus on the form of pronouns and they could understand and remember the form of
pronouns. Students have to read the sentence from the article and answer the questions in
the next part. It presents the sentence Mari is afraid to speak in public, so she challenges
herself by taking a public speaking class and the questions：who does she refer to and
who does herself refer to. She and herself belong to personal reference and the references

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in the previous text are circled out. Therefore, students could pay attention to the form
and the meaning of these pronouns and actually, this activity connect the form and
meaning of personal pronouns.
After a warm-up which contains the connection between form and meaning, the
next activity provides the clear description of forms, relating them to meanings and uses.
Firstly, it introduces that pronouns may replace or refer to previous nouns and gives
example of Mari is afraid to speak in public, so she(=MARI) challenges herself(=MARI)
by taking a public speaking class. One chart contains six categories of pronouns: subject,
object, possessive determiner+ noun (e.g. my book), possessive (e.g. writer’s), reflexive
and reciprocal. Then a second chart provides the use of pronouns with examples: Use a
possessive pronoun to replace a possessive determiner +singular or plural noun. The
possessive pronoun is equal to the subject that it replaces: My exercise class is at night.
Hers is on the weekend. (hers=her exercise class)/ Amy’s classes meet in the afternoon.
His meet in the morning. (his=his classes). The third part is to make students apply and
use the grammar. Students are required to circle correct pronouns in an interview. The
designs of activity are based on the purpose of helping students to distinguish the
difference of pronouns in six categories. The references of choosing the correct answer
are that students should choose the correct pronouns based on the correct part of speech,
position in the sentences and referential meaning. Pair work asks students to answer the
questions: what is difficult for you and what do you challenge yourself. Students would
use the pronouns in their speaking. Prepositions with reflexive pronouns are introduced in
this unit. It explains that reflexive pronouns frequently follow verbs with for, to and
about: do (something) for, make (something) for, talk to + (someone) according to the
research, like I made a schedule for myself. Students would learn the form that reflexive
pronouns take after the preposition. A following activity is designed for students to
choose the correct preposition with the reflexive pronouns.

Conclusion

The purpose of reviewing Grammar and Beyond is so that I have developed a

better understanding of how to critically evaluate texts, materials, and content for
students based on their appropriateness and thoroughness of dealing with the dimensions
of form, meaning, and use so as to best help my students develop their language skills. I
would take this book as an important reference when I want to apply the grammar in my
class. Compared with The Grammar Book, the grammar in Grammar and Beyond is more
concise and approachable in its presentation of grammar rules. I think the target audience
is one reason why these two books are different. The Grammar Book give a more
complete introduction for students or teacher who want to have a full-scale

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comprehension about grammar and Grammar and Beyond is used for teaching
intermediate English learners. The grammar which is presented in Grammar and Beyond
is beyond the usage-based instruction. In other words, an instructor who uses this book
would to teach the grammar which is frequently used and would help students to use the
grammar in their listening, speaking, reading and writing.

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