You can learn English in countless ways, but it’s hard to abandon the good old textbooks. Although they may not be as fun as watching videos or chatting with friends all over the world, they provide you the structured knowledge about the main grammatical forms and the most common text examples. There are different courses: some are best for correcting your grammar, some enrich your vocabulary the most, and some prepare you for the particular tests – but still, they all are tested with time and have already proven their effectiveness. Let’s see which of them may come in handy for your study.
English Vocabulary Builder
Using the picture-learning method, this book offers one of the most effortless ways to learn new words. Picture learning, originally used for kids, showed itself as a great method for the adults, too. It shows you the pictures of ordinary situations, items, and actions and gives a name and a transcription of the word. Our brain is naturally developed to recognize pictures and connect visual information with sound, so the method is just exploiting the natural mechanism that has already been developed by nature.
English Vocabulary Builder contains more than 3 000 words; the number that is enough for minimum conversation and daily life descriptions. There are additional volumes that help you learn the narrower areas of the vocabulary, such as business English or idioms. Each chapter has additional exercises, and online listening exercises may help you correct and train your pronunciation.
English Collocations in Use
Another great book for learning vocabulary that helps you memorize the words and remember how they are used in the sentences naturally. To do that, you need to study collocations, which is exactly the subject of this textbook. Each word here is given in the context, and the different situations and ways to use it are shown. The examples are quite simple, and all of them are used in real-life conversations, so it will be easy to understand them and add them to your active vocabulary. The same Cambridge University series has similar books for learning Phrasal Verbs and Idioms for the more advanced language users. Also, it’s a good idea to improve your vocabulary by writing essays on read books, using idioms. Find some examples of such essays on PaperAp to get a better understanding of such type of education.
Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary
Dictionaries are boring but practical. The Oxford one is one of the biggest English dictionaries that exist in the world. It contains more than 600 000 words. Of course, you will never need to know and use all of them, but the shortened version, the Oxford 3000, that contains the 3000 of the most popular and used English words may come in extremely handy. According to the study, one needs to know 3000 words only to understand most of the daily conversation, so it’s a good point to start from.
The Oxford dictionary is different from most of the other dictionaries. It also contains synonyms and collocations, so it helps you to understand where and how you can use the word. Surely, the full version is too heavy to carry in your pocket, but a digital copy is available on their website. The app version can also spell the word for you, adding another important function to your learning – speaking practice.
English Grammar In Use
Vocabulary isn’t everything you need to know to master the language. The rules for combining these words into sentences also matter. English Grammar In Use is the most popular textbook in the world that easily and conveniently explains the language’s tricks even to the newest learners. There are different courses from Beginner to Advanced level. This series of books will guide you through all the English grammar painlessly and with understandable examples.
The books listed above are classic examples of Oxford and Cambridge learning programs. They may seem a bit too conservative for the modern taste, but there are a few other books and programs that may be comparable in terms of efficiency and quality. So, Netflix and YouTube are great support sources of English, but nothing can substitute a good book!
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