Book Review — Scott Thornbury's Natural Grammar

Natural Grammar, by Scott Thornbury. Oxford University Press 2004.

Natural Grammar struck me as something entirely new in the EFL grammar teaching. It presents and analyses  grammatical structure according to a functional approach, which is   achieved by focusing on the actual patterns of use of normal speech. This book is an ambitious attempt to make students  and teachers look at grammar in an entirely different way.

Grammar is presented in this book as language made up of lexical chunks of meaning, which are shown to be part of a dynamic process of communication. To quote the introduction, the book is «about grammar, but it is organised around words.»

The book is made up of  100 most used words in the English language starting with «a» and running through to «you». You can find  presentations of the individual words  divided into four sections: definition, grammar patterns, collocations and set phrases. There are  examples of combinations, which are drawn from corpus examples of the most common English usage.  These are followed by  varied practice exercises to further enhance awareness of contextual examples.

All these high frequency words are contained within and covered by grammar itself, and if you learn them, along with all their lexical combinations. In addition to supplying contextual examples, Thornbury uses descriptions of parts of language to illustrate how elements interact. For example he shows how «get + noun phrase» can be used to talk about obtaining something and «get + adjective» can be used to talk about change. There are, however, none of the usual headings like «Present Perfect», and instead these themes are presented in relation to contextual combinations of keywords.  For example, the pages that present the keywords «have», «just» and «never» should give the reader a good understanding of the Present Perfect tense.

The book is aimed at  Upper Intermediate and Advanced students. I think it's greatest  advantage  is that it deals with a lot of common grammar constructions, which are often omitted by «traditional» grammar books.

The thing about the book that puzzles me is that I personally would  have difficulty fitting it  into a traditional language learning syllabus. At best I can only  use it as a reference book to compliment an established system. I am just not convinced that many of the pages of this book will make it into my class as they stand.

Based on the review of  Alex Case for TEFL.net.

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