Essential English for foreign students

de C. E. Eckersley

PREFACE Essential English is a course in four hooks, of which this is the first, for the teaching of English to adult foreign students. It aims at giving the student a sound knowledge of the essentials of both spoken and written English and taking him well on the way to a mastery of idiomatic conversational and literary English. The normal constructions and sentence patterns of English are introduced gradually and systematically, and are well drilled at every stage. The learner is guided through "essential" grammar in the simplest possible manner, and every new construction is explained and illustrated as soon as it is used. The restricted vocabulary within which the four books are written has been based on A General Service List of English Words.1 But neither this list, nor any other list, has been followed slavishly and blindly; the vocabulary and the grammar and the structures taught have been tested constantly by the experience gained during some thirty years of teaching English to foreign students or writing text-books for them. Because I believe that a knowledge of the spoken tongue is the true basis of language learning, much of this book is in "conversational" form; and my constant endeavour has been to ensure that, despite the restrictions that a limited vocabulary naturally imposes, every sentence in these conversations is expressed in the living, colloquial idiom that an educated Englishman would use. And, since the most effective spur to learning a language (or anything else) is interest, every effort has been made to cover the linguistic pill with the jam of gaiety. So, as soon as the preliminaries are mastered, the reader is introduced to Mr. Priestley, his household and his group of students. We see them here and in subsequent books chatting together, telling jokes, reading stories that they have written, singing songs or acting short plays. It is on these conversations and stories and the "talks by Mr. Priestley" that the language teaching is based, and from them that the copious exercises by which the teacher is enabled to test how far the work has been understood, are drawn. Fundamentally, this new edition of Essential English is the same as the old one, but there are one or two changes. Some extra material has been added ; the Future Tense has been treated rather more fully; comparison of adjectives, which originally was delayed until Book II, is now treated here in Lessons 20-22 ; Lesson 11 has been expanded ; there are two new "Stories without words" (page 155 and 166); the sections on sentence construction have been deferred to a later book and an index has been added. In the Teacher's handbook 1 that has been prepared to accompany this volume the general principles and the main techniques of language teaching are discussed, detailed suggestions and practical hints are given on the teaching of each lesson, and a complete Key to the Exercises is provided. Though a text-book that is the ideal one to every teacher and student is, perhaps, an impossibility, it is hoped that most students and teachers will feel that this new edition is an improvement on the old one, but the author will be most grateful at any time for further criticisms and suggestions that will help to make Essential English more useful to those who study it or teach from it. C. E. E. August, 1955. PREFACE Essential English, Book I, Teacher's Book.