A Descriptive Grammar of English Modern English Grammar by Example

Revised and updated version - 2023

• Recommended in IATEFL Voices
  The magazine of the International Association for Teachers of English as a Foreign Language
  Andrew Rossiter's A Descriptive Grammar of English by Example should be included on your list of reference materials. It reviews language as it is not only written but also spoken, and will cater for learners from upper-intermediate to advanced levels.... For the invested student, this book is a huge step forward, and having the English language laid out in such a user-friendly approach is a welcome treat for non-native teachers and learners.
• Reviewed in TESOLANZ bulletin, New Zealand."All good useful stuff and made very user friendly with clear formatting and colour coding. ... a useful, compact grammar reference, especially for those who want to improve their confidence in teaching grammar."
• Reviewed in EFL Magazine. "This is a useful reference book to have on hand when planning for and teaching grammar lessons. The clarity of explanations and wealth of examples, alongside helpful visual keys, provide both new and experienced teachers with something easy to dip into, regardless of the language level they are teaching."
• Reviewed in ELTAF Online bulletin, Germany. This book is ... very extensive without being too deep or analytical. The author seems to have a great understanding of many of the challenges that teachers and learners have, and tries to combat these challenges to make the English language more accessible for all."

This is a compact pedagogical reference Grammar of English for the 2020s, thorough, complete, original, clearly explained and accessible to all. It covers in detail all the essential points of English grammar, with abundant and carefully chosen examples and clear explanations, avoiding the confusing jargon that is common to many books on English grammar.

Approaching grammar as a semantic system rather than from the more technical morphosyntaxic approach currently favoured in the world of linguistics, this book not only takes the mystery out of English grammar but also answers questions that students (and teachers) ask, providing explanations that teachers can use and students can understand. It pays particular attention to the tricky questions that often baffle speakers of other languages, and even native speakers, such as the use of articles and determiners, or of conjunctions and connectors, or when to use an 's or an of for possession, which past tense to use, and other sometimes confusing points.
As a descriptive and pedagogical grammar, it shows by example how English is used today, and explains the principles or rules that define this usage. Descriptive grammar does not mean grammar without rules, but grammar with rules that reflect widely accepted contemporary usage. While these rules are largely based on the norms of written English, they apply too to spoken English, and this book points out significant differences where they exist.

A Descriptive Grammar of English is designed to cater specifically to the needs of teachers and students in the real life situations of school, university, home study or language classes; crucially, it sets out to demonstrate how simple the underlying rules of basic English grammar really are, not to show how complicated they can be.
It provides clear explanations of the many aspects of English grammar that native speakers seem to master intuitively, but are at a loss to explain. How is it that native speakers seem to know by intuition how to put adjectives in the right order? What's the difference between couldn't have and wasn't able to, and so on?

Coherently organised, and with a detailed table of contents, it is a very useful handbook for teachers and students from B1 level