Guidebooks

I recently did an evaluation of a textwhich is part of a series of multilanguage workbooks called Practice Makes Perfect: English Grammar for ESL Learners by Ed Swick. I foudn it to be no more and no less than what it advertised: Not a comprehensive course but a practice book for grammar. It was very accessible but limitied in its ability to teach language in context, but that is what I would have expected from a workbork. Many other languages are included in this series. We've discussed pros and cons of drill-and-practice types of approaches. This kind of text seems to be what would make good supplementary material to a language situation whether in the classroom or to help get the forms solidified in the mind to prepare for speaking opportunities, but on its own, a pretty sorry guided practice. I don't know that I would invest much in it,but then again it doesn't cost much either.

We're all familiar with various texts for language classroom but I am on a quest to find the best of independent study resources whether in a book, finding some kind of human mentor or guide or one of many online learning forms. My emphasis is on grammar learning. I am very curious at the process by which people learn a second language's grammar, since to me it seems to involve more than rote memorization or perhaps a different kind of memorization that may be the fruits of drilling. I am inclined to believe that no text will ever be unstilted enough to approach the level of help i found while listening to grammar construct and communicate the ideas as they flowed spontaneously from a native speaker friend. I'm looking for an experience as close to that as I can find.

My TESOL instructor had a few titles that seem to hit on what I'm looking for. One is a text called ACTIVE, a series written by professors at Brigham Young University in Utah and the other is called Performed Culture, an approach to learning Chinese that nicely address teh form and function of language in context. See if you can find them!