If English is sounding like a foreign language, make it easy and effortless with the ultimate study guide.
This visual reference book takes you through all the different parts of the English language, leaving you ready to help your children tackle the trickiest of subjects.
Carol Vorderman's unique study aid encourages parents and children to work together as a team to understand and use all aspects of the English language, including grammar, punctuation, and spelling. This latest title in the best-selling Help Your Kids series combines pictures, diagrams, instructions, and examples to cover the components of the school syllabus, while building knowledge, boosting confidence, and aiding understanding.
With your support, children can overcome the challenges of English, leaving them calm, confident, and exam ready.
Author(s): Carol Vorderman
Series: Help Your Kids
Edition: UK ed
Publisher: DK
Year: 2013
Contents 8
FOREWORD 6
WHY LEARN THE RULES? 10
SPOKEN AND WRITTEN LANGUAGE 12
ENGLISH AROUND THE WORLD 14
1 GRAMMAR
The purpose of grammar 18
Parts of speech 20
Nouns 22
Plurals 24
Adjectives 26
Comparatives and superlatives 28
Articles 30
Determiners 32
Pronouns 34
Number and gender 36
Verbs 38
Adverbs 40
Simple tenses 42
Perfect and continuous tenses 44
Participles 46
Auxiliary verbs 48
Irregular verbs 50
Verb agreement 52
Voices and moods 54
Phrasal verbs 56
Conjunctions 58
Prepositions 60
Interjections 62
Phrases 64
Clauses 66
Sentences 68
Compound sentences 70
Complex sentences 72
Using clauses correctly 74
Managing modifiers 76
Commonly misused words 78
Negatives 80
Relative clauses 82
Idioms, analogies and figures of speech 84
Colloquialisms and slang 86
Direct and indirect speech 88
What is punctuation? 92
Full stops and ellipses 94
Commas 96
Other uses of commas 98
Semi-colons 100
Colons 102
Apostrophes 104
Hyphens 106
Inverted commas 108
Question marks 110
Exclamation marks 112
Brackets and dashes 114
Bullet points 116
Numbers, dates and time 118
Other punctuation 120
Italics 122
3 SPELLING
Why learn to spell? 126
Alphabetical order 128
Vowel sounds 130
Morphemes 136
Syllables 134
Consonant sounds 132
Understanding English irregularities 138
Roots 140
2 PUNCTUATION
Prefixes and suffixes 142
Hard and soft letter sounds 144
Words ending in -e or -y 146
Words ending in -tion, -sion or -ssion 148
Words ending in -able or -ible 150
Words ending in -le, -el, -al or -ol 152
Single and double consonant words 154
The “i before e except after c” rule 156
Capital letters 158
Silent letters 160
Compound words 162
Irregular word spellings 164
Homonyms, homophones and homographs 166
Confusing words 168
Other confusing words 170
Abbreviations 172
British and American spellings 174
More British and American spellings 176
4 COMMUNICATION SKILLS
Effective communication 180
Picking the right words 182
Making sentences interesting 184
Planning and research 186
Paragraphing 188
Genre, purpose and audience 190
Reading and commenting on texts 192
Layout and presentational features 194
Writing to inform 196
Newspaper articles 198
Letters and e-mails 200
Writing to influence 202
Writing to explain or advise 204
Writing to analyse or review 206
Writing to describe 208
Writing from personal experience 210
Writing a narrative 212
Writing for the Web 214
Writing a script 216
Re-creations 218
Checking and editing 220
The spoken word 222
Debates and role plays 224
Writing a speech 226
Presentation skills 228
5 REFERENCE
Reference – Grammar 232
Reference – Punctuation 236
Reference – Spelling 238
Reference – Communication skills 244
Glossary 248
Index 252
Acknowledgements 256
