Creating a favourable language identity through grammar accuracy enhancement. The Verb and Adverb Systems in English – A book review

Abstract

The book entitled The Verb and Adverb Systems in English was published only a month ago by the Faculty of Law and Business Studies dr Lazar Vrkatić, Novi Sad, Serbia, a higher education institution where the book Author, Tatjana Glušac, is employed as an associate professor. Tatjana works at the Department of English at the mentioned Faculty and the book is, as it is stated in the Introduction, primarily intended for her first-year students, but it certainly has wider appeal.The book has 261 pages and is divided into eleven chapters, which offer a synthesis of up-to-date, relevant theoretical concepts related to the English verb and adverb systems. Moreover, each chapter is accompanied by a set of exercises/activities aimed at initiating discussion about a number of possible answers to the questions they contain, assessing students' understanding of the presented theoretical concepts, or their ability to apply the newly acquired content in communicative contexts. Explaining in detail how the verb and adverb systems function in the English language, not only does Tatjana contribute to the expansion of her students' knowledge of these aspects of English grammar, but she also helps them question their existing knowledge base and amend any potential erroneous beliefs they might hold. Since many activities require the application of knowledge, provoke discussion, and active language use, they contribute to improving students' language ability and thinking. Perfecting their knowledge of grammar is paramount both for the quality of the education they are pursuing and the quality of different language services they will provide one day. The Author succeeds in achieving all that has been mentioned so far not only by providing a sound synthesis of relevant linguistic sources, but also by using good examples to illustrate her theoretical points and, wherever possible, by explaining how a certain grammatical point is realized in different varieties of the English language.The first six chapters tackle various verb-related issues. The first chapter is entitled "Characteristics of the English verb" and gives some basic, yet crucial information regarding the verb as a part of speech, such as its form, categories (tense, aspect, mood, and voice), and classifications (stative and dynamic, main and auxiliary). Besides that, in this chapter the Author discusses the concept of the verb phrase as well. Chapter 2 is devoted to main and auxiliary verbs and the Author discusses the characteristics and use of the two groups of verbs. In Chapter 3 Tatjana tackles the five forms of the English verb discussing how each is used, what implications different forms of a single verb have, etc. Where needed, the Author specifies pronunciation or spelling rules and draws a parallel between British and American English. Chapter 4 offers an insight into the nature and use of stative and dynamic verbs. The Author devotes much attention to exceptions as well, i.e. to those stative verbs that can sometimes be used as dynamic, and thus helps the reader ...