Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 05:34:05 -0600

From: Natalie Maynor maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]RA.MSSTATE.EDU

Subject: Re: An English Grammar Text



In short, something like enlightened traditional grammar. The book I



I sometimes teach a course designed for an audience very similar to the

one you've described and have had a hard time finding a good book for it.

The last one I really liked has been out of print for years now:

LaPalombara (sp?? -- I'm confident that's misspelled). It included some

traditional and then moved into other approaches with clear explanations

and lots of good exercises. Of the four or five different books I've

tried since then, I've finally settled on Klammer & Schultz as the most

usable. Runner-up was Kolln. I liked some things better about Kolln

than about Klammer & Schultz and may return to Kolln at some point.

Two that I ruled out as "never again" for different reasons are Stageberg

(way too skimpy for my purposes in that course) and Kaplan (way above the

students' heads in places -- I spent most of the semester I used it making

handouts to explain things, and we abandoned the book totally toward the

end of the semester since all it was doing was confusing them).



Sorry about the incomplete references above. If I were in my office, I

could give titles. All the titles were introductory sounding -- things

like _Introduction to English Grammar_ or _Analyzing English Grammar_.

--Natalie (maynor[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ra.msstate.edu)