Learner English

by Michael Swan and Bernard Smith

Book Overview

Learner English is a practical reference book which compares the relevant features of students' own languages with English, helping teachers to predict and understand the problems their students have. It includes 22 chapters, each of which covers one language background. Chapters are written by specialists with experience in teaching students from the areas concerned. They describe and explain the most important typical pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521779391
• ISBN13: 9780521779395
• Release Date: May 2001
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 378 Pages
• Weight: 1.28 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.4" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Essential reference for teachers of English (ESL, ELL)

This in one of my favorite texts. I refer to its relevant chapter each time I start teaching English to a student with a primary language I've never encountered before. Predictions this book makes about common problems that may be encountered by the learner are right on the mark. I'd feel lost without my "Learner English" book!

INvaluable resource for English language teachers

If you have a desire to understand errors associated with English language learners that come from various cultural backgrounds, then this is the book for you!

Excellent Resource for ESL Teachers

This book is an asset to understanding which aspects of English may cause students from various L1 backgrounds the most trouble. Excellent for a multicultural classroom.

Great resource for EFL instructors, learners, and linguists

This is an amazingly thorough resource that explains different problems different learner groups have with English. The books is organized by language group (Chinese, Vietnamese, Spanish, etc.) so that you can easily look up your area of interest. Each chapter covers phonology, orthography, grammar, vocabulary, culture, writing/translation issues, and more. Each EFL teacher should have a copy of this book, to help him/her understand his/her students better, and it would be great for EFL students to have a copy too, so they can more readily see their pattern of errors. The only thing missing is some kind of section on exercises to do to correct the errors. You'll have to go to another book for that.