English Grammar Beginner Guide

Why should you study English? Do you speak and write English? That’s reason enough. When you speak or write, you present yourself to others, and if you care at all about how you’re perceived—and who doesn’t?—you care about how your use of language represents you. Certainly, not all jobs depend exclusively upon writing and speaking skills, but most do to some significant extent. If you are in school, your teachers have probably set a standard for written and spoken English.

As you begin English Grammar Simplified, get ready for a different learning experience. English Grammar Simplified will help you better understand and use the English language, but you will find that this app takes a different approach from the usual English improvement text. You will learn the basics of English grammar with a thorough overview of the parts of speech and punctuation and capitalization rules. The next part of the app builds on these skills, giving you sound advice on mastering proper sentence structure and refining your writing. The latter part covers important spelling and word usage skills.

In support of all of these concepts, you will also find great emphasis on finding common errors. In other words, this is not simply a grammar app. Rather, this app identifies where errors are most commonly made—so you can avoid them. You may, for example, know the definition of a pronoun (i.e., a word that takes the place of a noun), but you may not recognize one of the most common pronoun errors. Read the following sentence:


This app includes:
PART ONE ALL ABOUT THE ENGLISH SENTENCE
CHAPTER 1 The Essential Elements of the English Sentence
Subject and Verb
Sentence Fragments and Run-Ons
Time and Number: Agreement Between Subject and Verb
Perfect Verb Tenses
Irregular Verbs

CHAPTER 2 Introduction to the Parts of Speech
Parts of Speech
Nouns
Verbs
Adjectives
Adverbs
Pronouns
Prepositions
Conjunctions
Interjections
Articles


CHAPTER 3 More About Verbs, Prepositions, and Pronouns
Perfect Tenses
Prepositional Phrases
More About Pronouns
Personal Pronouns
Mirror Pronouns
Relative Pronouns
Who, Whom, That, or Which?
Demonstrative Pronouns
Indefinite Pronouns

PART TWO ALL ABOUT PUNCTUATION AND CAPITALIZATION
CHAPTER 4 Punctuation: End Marks and Commas
Brief History of Punctuation
Period
Question Mark
Exclamation Point
Comma

CHAPTER 5 More About Punctuation
Semicolon
Quotation Marks
Colon
Apostrophe
Dash and Hyphen
Parentheses and Brackets
CHAPTER 6 Capitalization
Brief History of the Alphabet and Capitalization
Modern Rules of Capitalization

PART THREE MASTERING GOOD SENTENCE STRUCTURE
CHAPTER 7 Building Better Sentences
Building Balanced Sentences
Creating Well-Connected Sentences
Trimming Unnecessary Words from Sentences


CHAPTER 8 Punctuation Builds Sentences
Punctuation in Sentence Building
Simple Sentences
Compound Sentences
Complex Sentences
Compound-Complex Sentences

CHAPTER 9 Style and Clarity
Writing Clearer Sentences
Using Active Verbs
Placing Important Information Last
Using Verbs Instead of Nouns
Avoiding Unclear Pronoun References
Placing Descriptive Words Correctly
Deleting Unnecessary Words
Correcting Illogical Statements
Writing Balanced Sentences—a Reminder
Using Prepositions Correctly in a Series

PART FOUR SPELLING AND WORD USAGE SKILLS
CHAPTER 10 Proven Techniques to Improve Spelling
Who Needs Help with Spelling?
Techniques for Improving Spelling Skills
Helpful Spelling Rules—or Not
Becoming a Better Speller


CHAPTER 11 Correct Word Usage
Easily Confused Words: Homonyms, Homophones, and Homographs
Incorrectly Used Words and Phrases
Words That Sound Almost Alike but Have Different Meanings