English For The Natives: Discover The Grammar You Don`t Know You Know

Product Description

` My first English lesson was grammar with the terrifying Mrs Petrie. She spent the entire time marching up & down the classroom, thwacking various items of school furniture with a ruler while she banged on about the ING part of the verb. I sat there, vibrating with fear, desperately trying to figure out what on earth she could mean. Irregular Negative Gerund? Intransitive Nominative Genitive? It was only years later, when I was teaching English to foreign students, that I realised that English grammar wasn`t obscure & wilfully difficult but a fascinating subject which I was already brilliant at
- & this book will prove that you are too.` Forget the little you think you know about English grammar & start afresh with this highly entertaining & accessible guide. English for the Natives outlines the rules & structures of our language as they are taught to foreign students
- & have never before been explained to us. Harry Ritchie also examines the grammar of dialects as well as standard English & shows how non-standard forms are just as valid. With examples from a wide variety of sources, from Ali G to John Betjeman, Margaret Thatcher to Match of the Day, this essential book reveals some surprising truths about our language & teaches you all the things you didn`t know you knew about grammar.