Natural Grammar, by Scott Thornbury

Natural Grammar, by Scott Thornbury. Oxford University Press 2004. Reviewed by Rory Braddell

There are quite a lot of differences among EFL teachers regarding how best to teach grammar. Some teachers would probably follow the traditional idea of a prescriptive grammar, presenting rules and structures of language that define so-called good and bad usage. Natural Grammar, however, struck me as something entirely new in the EFL repertoire, as it is designed to make students and teachers think about new ways to analyse grammatical structure according to a functional approach. This is achieved by focusing on the actual patterns of use of normal speech, in which grammar emerges from the lexis of words, rather than being broken into little pieces that are defined by terminology. 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. In his previous books Scott Thornbury has also made a convincing case for a concept of grammar as an emerging process, in which the learner uncovers grammatical structures that are not removed from essential patterns of the spoken language. The innovation of Natural Grammar was acknowledged by the British Council who awarded the book the third prize in the prestigious Elton Awards of 2004.

The book is made up of one hundred pages of double-page spreads, which each feature one of the 100 most used words in the English language starting with “a” and running through to “you”. On the left-hand pages you will find presentations of the individual words, which are each divided into four sections: definition, grammar patterns, collocations and set phrases. There are copious examples of combinations, which are drawn from corpus examples of the most common English usage. On the right-hand pages you will find varied practice exercises to further enhance awareness of contextual examples. To quote the introduction, the book is “about grammar, but it is organised around words.” The concept is that grammar is not the main organisational principle of language, but should be treated as an extension of lexical construction. All these high frequency words are contained within and covered by grammar itself, and if you learn them, along with all their lexical combinations, you are getting traditional grammar for free without even mentioning terminology. Thornbury does not completely discard traditional ways of describing grammar patterns, and in addition to supplying contextual examples, he 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. Likewise, the keyword “if” brings about a thorough examination of different forms of conditional sentences, without even mentioning grammar-jargon terms such as “second/third conditional”.

I think that the advantage of this book is that it deals with a lot of common grammar constructions, which are often omitted by prescriptive grammar books that tend to tell people how to talk (production), rather than studying the way they talk (process). Another interesting aspect is that colloquial forms of language, such as the combination “get + to-infinitive” to talk about achieving something in “did you get to see the ruins” and “it gets me” to indicate annoyance, which are sometimes ignored by established EFL materials, are well covered in this book. The only criticism I have is there is little or no advice for teachers and students on how to use the book in the introduction, and due to the extensive content, I feel that it would only suit a higher level student. I am wondering if one of my students would know where to start in this book, as it does not present grammar as part of a syllabus that can be learned incrementally and at best can only be used as a reference book to compliment an established system.

April 2005, Rory Braddell