Help Your Kids with English: A Unique Step-by-Step Visual Guide

Description

If English is sounding like a foreign language, make it easy and effortless with the ultimate study guide. This visual reference book takes you through all the different parts of the English language, leaving you ready to help your children tackle the trickiest of subjects. Carol Vorderman's unique study aid encourages parents and children to work together as a team to understand and use all aspects of the English language, including grammar, punctuation, and spelling. This latest title in the best-selling Help Your Kids series combines pictures, diagrams, instructions, and examples to cover the components of the school syllabus, while building knowledge, boosting confidence, and aiding understanding. With your support, children can overcome the challenges of English, leaving them calm, confident, and exam ready. Contents 8 FOREWORD 6 WHY LEARN THE RULES? 10 SPOKEN AND WRITTEN LANGUAGE 12 ENGLISH AROUND THE WORLD 14 1 GRAMMAR The purpose of grammar 18 Parts of speech 20 Nouns 22 Plurals 24 Adjectives 26 Comparatives and superlatives 28 Articles 30 Determiners 32 Pronouns 34 Number and gender 36 Verbs 38 Adverbs 40 Simple tenses 42 Perfect and continuous tenses 44 Participles 46 Auxiliary verbs 48 Irregular verbs 50 Verb agreement 52 Voices and moods 54 Phrasal verbs 56 Conjunctions 58 Prepositions 60 Interjections 62 Phrases 64 Clauses 66 Sentences 68 Compound sentences 70 Complex sentences 72 Using clauses correctly 74 Managing modifiers 76 Commonly misused words 78 Negatives 80 Relative clauses 82 Idioms, analogies and figures of speech 84 Colloquialisms and slang 86 Direct and indirect speech 88 What is punctuation? 92 Full stops and ellipses 94 Commas 96 Other uses of commas 98 Semi-colons 100 Colons 102 Apostrophes 104 Hyphens 106 Inverted commas 108 Question marks 110 Exclamation marks 112 Brackets and dashes 114 Bullet points 116 Numbers, dates and time 118 Other punctuation 120 Italics 122 3 SPELLING Why learn to spell? 126 Alphabetical order 128 Vowel sounds 130 Morphemes 136 Syllables 134 Consonant sounds 132 Understanding English irregularities 138 Roots 140 2 PUNCTUATION Prefixes and suffixes 142 Hard and soft letter sounds 144 Words ending in -e or -y 146 Words ending in -tion, -sion or -ssion 148 Words ending in -able or -ible 150 Words ending in -le, -el, -al or -ol 152 Single and double consonant words 154 The “i before e except after c” rule 156 Capital letters 158 Silent letters 160 Compound words 162 Irregular word spellings 164 Homonyms, homophones and homographs 166 Confusing words 168 Other confusing words 170 Abbreviations 172 British and American spellings 174 More British and American spellings 176 4 COMMUNICATION SKILLS Effective communication 180 Picking the right words 182 Making sentences interesting 184 Planning and research 186 Paragraphing 188 Genre, purpose and audience 190 Reading and commenting on texts 192 Layout and presentational features 194 Writing to inform 196 Newspaper articles 198 Letters and e-mails 200 Writing to influence 202 Writing to explain or advise 204 Writing to analyse or review 206 Writing to describe 208 Writing from personal experience 210 Writing a narrative 212 Writing for the Web 214 Writing a script 216 Re-creations 218 Checking and editing 220 The spoken word 222 Debates and role plays 224 Writing a speech 226 Presentation skills 228 5 REFERENCE Reference – Grammar 232 Reference – Punctuation 236 Reference – Spelling 238 Reference – Communication skills 244 Glossary 248 Index 252 Acknowledgements 256