# Any website/books for grammar



## ney001 (22 May 2012)

Hi guys

I have an employee here who is tasked with writing reports and summaries.  This employee although fine in other areas such as filing/organisation skills has a very poor standard of English, particularly grammar and uses of past tense/present tense.  

Is there any website or book which you could recommend which would be clear enough for the employee to understand and would deal with all the basic grammar errors.  She doesn't need to write lengthy essays or anything and I don't want to confuse her with a lot of detail but she definitely needs guidance.  

Cheers


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## Janet (22 May 2012)

Is she a native English speaker or not?  That might make a difference to replies.


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## ney001 (22 May 2012)

Yes - sorry she is a native English speaker.


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## Brendan Burgess (22 May 2012)

I am not sure that you can learn grammar from a book very easily. Would you consider asking an English teacher to give her a few classes?


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## WindUp (22 May 2012)

The book "Eats shoots and Leaves" contains a lot of the more common errors


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## Janet (22 May 2012)

Generally I tend to agree with Brendan that learning grammar from a book is difficult.  I do know that a girl I shared a house with a few years ago was also asked to read Eats, Shoots and Leaves in order to brush up on her grammar, also in relation to writing reports and so on.  Perhaps that would at least be a start.  There are websites like painintheenglish as well, which can be a useful reference tool.

I do think though, that if she does not consider grammar and correct use of English to be important then it really is going to be difficult.  Despite never having learned much in the way of grammar in school I tend to fall more towards the 'grammar nazi' side of the sprectrum (could it be that that B1 in honours English 20 years ago made me feel a bit smug?  ) and am always interested in the topic.  But lots and lots of people really think it's just irrelevant so you might have to deal with that, too.  Have you already spoken to her about it?

One other way to approach it might be a typing course.  If such a thing still exists and she hasn't already done one.  I know when I was learning to type that kind of thing was also considered important.


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## HappyBudda (22 May 2012)

Send a memo out to employees stating the need to use spellcheck in all emails, memos, etc., this would give you a way in where you can pull them on typos, grammar, and the like.  I personally hate the whole to, too, and two mix ups. Also the they're, there, and their mixups, also the........


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## DrMoriarty (22 May 2012)

HappyBudda said:


> a way in where...




www.grammarbook.com is OK for the basics; The Cambridge Guide to English Usage is comprehensive (Warning: 10MB .pdf file).

 at Rutgers University is worth a look, too.


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## Leper (22 May 2012)

Some schools run night classes on the correct use of English, telephone answering techniques, report writing, memo taking etc etc.  The courses are not expensive and not under-subscribed.

In or around the same subject, I noticed there were night classes on how to speak properly, how to serve dinner, how to lay a table, how to sit etc. I kid you not and these were not under-subscribed either.


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## ney001 (23 May 2012)

Hi guys, great stuff thanks for all replies.

To be honest we have sent her on quite a few training courses for various aspects of the business; this was an intern position at first and we spent quite a lot of money on training in the first six months not to mention time.   I am slightly reluctant at this stage to pay for any more formal training.  From my general conversations with her, it seems she doesn't read, she has read one book in her life and that was a bit of a struggle.  I had thought about "Eats shoots and Leaves" but I think a book might just be a bit too much for her, particularly on this topic.  Ideally I would love some type of interactive website, I have committed to giving her an hour a day to work on this aspect of her training so she could perhaps do some exercises in that time.   

Essentially she has to summarize various reports, she will make the usual mistakes of 'they're their there' etc but more than that she is lost when it comes to construction of sentences. She will write sentences that are perhaps 4-5 words in duration or on the other end of the spectrum she will have sentences which are 5-6 lines long with no punctuation at all.  

I know it's difficult to learn all of this now, I would be satisfied if we could just deal with punctuation and the main grammar points for now so that obvious errors can be self corrected.  I will have a look at all the suggestions given on this thread and perhaps print off the main points for her.  

Thank again guys, appreciate it.

Just checked grammarbook.com  - i'd say this might do the job.  I have also enrolled her in a free online course for grammar, although not sure how much use it will be.


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## DaveyWavey (23 May 2012)

Dyslexia?


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## Shawady (23 May 2012)

WindUp said:


> The book "Eats shoots and Leaves" contains a lot of the more common errors


 
Never read it myself but have colleagues that have used it to brush up on grammer.
Apparantly it was a huge bestseller a few years ago.


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## tallpaul (23 May 2012)

Another useful book is 'Grammar for Grown-ups' which deals with various aspects of grammar in a casual style but which is informative. It deals with punctuation as well as the common mis-use of words mistakes e.g. It is written by a former British intelligence officer...


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## Ceepee (23 May 2012)

From what you say, ney001, it doesn't sound like she's really cut out for the role.  Even with tuition, whether self-directed or in a taught environment, could you ever be really confident that her writing would be up to a suitable standard?  Her talents may lie elsewhere, but it doesn't appera that precis-writing is her strong point.


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## ney001 (23 May 2012)

Ceepee i'm inclined to agree with you and so am working on a compromise i.e leaving her with more admin tasks etc and leaving the writing to myself or somebody else.   Lovely person, fits in well in most respects and very young so  so I'm going to see if we can work around the issues.  I am of the belief that there may be a dyslexia issue, I have myself witnessed quite a few traits she displays (8 out of 10 on an adult dyslexia checklist) so with that in mind I am not going to be forcing her into a position of doing something she is not capable of doing.


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## horusd (23 May 2012)

This is a handy one. http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/1/5/


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## Purple (24 May 2012)

DaveyWavey said:


> Dyslexia?



Spell check usually sorts out the errors dyslexics make (I should know).


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## Marion (24 May 2012)

Purple said:


> Spell check usually sorts out the errors dyslexics make (I should know).




Purple:

How do you know which option/answer is correct in the spell check if you are dyslexic?

Do you use a specialised spell checker or the bog-standard Word spell checker?

I am really interested in the answer. Thanks.

Marion


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## Purple (28 May 2012)

Marion said:


> Purple:
> 
> How do you know which option/answer is correct in the spell check if you are dyslexic?
> 
> ...


 

It's only mild dyslexia with a touch of Asperger syndrome. It made for a really fun time in school in the 80's when both were on the "Stupid/bold" spectrum. The only lasting legacy is my inability to spell and bad short term memory/ disorganisation. When I use spell check it's clear what the correct spelling is (nearly all of the time). I spelled “syndrome” and “disorganisation” incorrectly when writing this.
My younger son has the same thing but schools are different now.


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## Marion (30 May 2012)

Thanks Purple

Glad to hear that your son has a positive experience at school.

Marion


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## Purple (30 May 2012)

Marion said:


> Thanks Purple
> 
> Glad to hear that your son has a positive experience at school.
> 
> Marion


 
Thanks, he's doing fine. It seems slapping children to the floor and then kicking them in the kidneys is no longer in vogue. His teacher last year was a disaster but he's made very good progress this year and he's staying in the top half of the class. 
Academically it's not really been a problem but we've had to work on socialisation etc. especially with his peer group. 
 
I see him and it’s like watching myself as a child. Luckily Mrs Purple trained as a primary school teacher before she changed to her present career and her father is a retired teacher so he gets lots of support outside school.


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## Marion (30 May 2012)

Hi Purple



			
				Purple said:
			
		

> It seems slapping children to the floor and then kicking them in the kidneys is no longer in vogue.



You clearly have had a very bad/horrendous/brutal experience in the hands of teacher(s).

Interestingly, I read an open letter from a teacher in the Irish Times last week apologising for  slapping and hurting children who were in her care in a primary school maybe 30 years ago. 

Teaching now is very different.

There is absolutely no toleration of abuse - verbal, physical or otherwise.

It's good to hear That your son is doing very well with his new teacher. 

Marion


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