Book subtitle: A grammar practice book for advanced students of English, with answers.

Book includes index and answer key.

"This book teaches modern British English. It deals with the grammar of speech and writing in both formal and informal styles. [...]

This book give a great deal of practice - more complete and varied than any similar book. Some exercises simply focus on structure; others make students think, solve problems, express opinions, talk about their experience etc. This is enough to fix the structures and rules in learners' mind and help them towards much more correct language use. But no single practice book can completely bridge the gap between conscious knowledge of a rule and the ability to apply it spontaneously in communication. [...]

The Oxford English Grammar Course shows how grammar is used in real-life communication, in authentic or adapted texts from newspapers and magazines, letters, quotations, advertisements and many other sources. [...]

The 'Pronunciation for grammar' CD-ROM gives practice on:
intonation
word and sentence stress
linking words together
unstressed words and syllables
grammatical endings

The exercises focus on hearing as well as speaking: fore many language students, the main problem is not saying things correctly, but hearing exactly what is said. The CD-ROM also offers practice in listening to speakers with different native accents (English, Scottish, US American) and to speakers whose first language is not English." (Introduction, p. vi-viii)

CONTENTS

Introduction

Some useful grammatical terminology

List of topics

Part 1: word and sentence grammar

Part 2: grammar beyond the sentence

Appendices

Answer key

Index

LIST OF TOPICS

Part 1 word and sentence grammar

SECTION 1 basic sentence types

Section 2 Be, Have, and Do

Section 3 Present and Future Pages

SECTION 4 Past and Perfect Tenses

SECTION 5 Modal Verbs

Section 6 Passives

Section 7 Infinitives and -ing Forms

Section 8 Various Structures with Verbs

Section 9 Nouns and Pronouns

Section 10 Determiners (1): Articles, Demonstratives and Possessives

Section 11 Determiners (2): Quantifiers

Section 12 Adjectives, Adverbs, and Comparison

Section 13 Prepositions

Section 14 Conjunctions, Clauses, and Tenses

Section 15 Adjective

Section 16 Noun Clauses

Section 17 Adverb Clauses

PART 2 Grammar Beyond the Sentence
information structure: what comes first?
information structure: getting the right subject
pronoun problems
linking clauses with conjunctions and adverbs
special word order: fronting
special word order: inversion
emphasis: it.. that
emphasis: what... is/was
discourse markers
reading complicated sentences
complex noun phrases in writing
mixed structures
ellipsis after auxiliaries
ellipsis with infinitives
ellipsis with so and not
ellipsis after and, but and or ellipsis at the beginning of spoken sentences
the structure of spoken sentences
short answers, reply questions and question tags
three kinds of spoken question
politeness: using questions
politeness; being indirect
emphasis in speech: stress
repetition
abbreviated styles
news headlines

System Requirements: Windows: Pentium III, 1 GHz processor, Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Windows 7, 1 GB RAM, 400 MB free hard disk space, 24x CD-ROM drive, 1024 x768 screen resolution displaying 32-bit colour, sound blaster compatible sound card ; Mac: Power Macintosh Power PC 1 GHz processor (G3 or higher recommended), Mac OS X.5, X.6, 400 MB free hard disk space, 24x CD-ROM drive, 1024 x 768 screen resolution displaying 32-bit colour.