Grammar Slammer by English Teacher X

grammar-slammer

ETX’s most recent book, Grammar Slammer is a self-explanatory guide to grammar, aimed squarely at those teaching English abroad. While it’d be easy to compare it to his previous teaching book, Speaking Activities That Don’t SuckGrammar Slammer is considerably more involved than that book due to the bizarre, conflicting and strange (at least from an outsider’s perspective) rules of English grammar. Hell, I majored in English in college and even didn’t know much of this stuff:

SO, a NOUN can broadly be described as a person, place, thing or idea. Rock, car, China, sunglasses, rash, eucalyptus, coronary, slut, Armageddon, pancreas – all nouns.

A VERB is a word that describes an action. Jump, die, congregate, ponder, vomit, recoil, pace, slide, reanimate, pamper. These are all verbs.

ETX explains just about every aspect of English grammar you could think of and a few that never would have occurred to me, such as the present perfect continuous and all sorts of other strange stuff. Per usual, Grammar Slammer is seasoned with his bleak, dark humor, which makes the bitter medicine he’s serving go down that much easier:

I’m meeting my baby-mama for dinner tonight at 8:00 pm.

We’re working until 9:00 pm tonight; we can’t come to the Amway meeting.

He’s seeing an opera next Thursday at 4:00 pm. Man, he’s desperate to get laid.

I’m taking my girlfriend to the Seychelles next July. Or so she thinks.

Famed terrorist Tarantula Bob is killing the President tonight at 8:30 pm.

I wouldn’t exactly call Grammar Slammer a must-buy, but unlike Speaking Activities That Don’t Suck, it’s worth a look even if you have no interest in teaching English. It’s a surprisingly informative book with applications outside of teaching English abroad. I liked it as it helped me better understand how the English language works.

Click here to buy Grammar Slammer.

Read Next: Speaking Activities That Don’t Suck by English Teacher X