Review on Oxford Practice Grammar | ASM Mustafizur Rahman

The English language is one of the most complex and discouraging languages to learn. There are many different confusing rules that make this task much more difficult. Remembering all of these rules is next to impossible. However, there are several different software programs for learning English in right way and Oxford Practice Grammar Advance is one of them. There are several software programs for learning English language but Oxford Practice Grammar Advance is totally different from them. Because Oxford Practice Grammar Advance is not only dealt with grammar, rather then it deals with the four skills, which we call reading, writing, listening and speaking skills.


Oxford Practice Grammar knows that students need different types of explanation and practice at each level of their study. And it contains three-level grammar practices. This three-level grammar practice series takes students through from elementary to advanced level English. The way in which grammar is presented and practiced reflects the needs of the student at each stage of their learning. The 'Basic' level provides lots of practice and short explanations; 'Intermediate' gives us more detail with extended practice; 'Advanced' gives challenging practice activities and in-depth explanations.


Oxford Practice Grammar


The CD-ROM contains interactive exercises and tests in three parts: Listen and Speak, Read and Write, and Test and Review. Listen and Speak has two parts. The first, Listening Practice, has five sets of exercises with ten audio single-sentence questions or statements in each set. Each question or statement is matched with three multiple-choice answers to test listening comprehension.


The second part has twenty dialogues with blanks to be filled in to complete the sentences in the dialogues. Users can complete the sentences, check their answers on the screen, see correct answers and audio-record their reading aloud of the dialogues or listen to pre-recorded readings. Here is an example:
Dialogue 11: Prepositions
Read the dialogue and then write in the parts that are missing. Sometimes different answers are possible. When you have finished, you can record yourself taking part in the conversation. (Then you can listen to yourself or the model dialogue.)
Completing these dialogues is a useful practice in preparing for listening comprehension tests similar to some found in the paper- or computer-based TOEFL.

Read and Write contains 34 paragraph-editing exercises, pairs of which correspond to each of the seventeen chapters of the book. One paragraph of each pair is shorter, with five mistakes; the other longer, with ten mistakes. Users need to find and try tom correct each grammatical error before moving to the next. A right correction is confirmed instantly; otherwise, the right answer is provided. This section is claimed to be "the only grammar CD-ROM [available] with interactive 'find and correct the mistake' exercises" (back cover). Such editing exercises should help users improve grammatical accuracy in their writing.

‘Test and Review’ consists of four tests, each with 50 multiple-choice sentence-completion items on grammar points discussed in the chapters. The review part indicates the page number in the book where the grammar point tested is explained. Thus, users can refer to the book for explanations of why their answer is right or wrong.

 However, if anyone wants to get this software, he/she will have to buy it with some dollars. Although this software is available on online but it is not free at all. And in order to operate this software we have to have some mini software; like Flash Player, Adobe Reader, and Java Scripts as well as pop-up windows.
Practice Grammar Advance is very user-friendly software. Each and every task is very organized. Before doing the task the learners will get a clear instruction to complete the task. And a little bit computer literacy is needed to operate this software. 
At last, I would like to say this software offers excellent materials and a wide range of grammatical topics. Each of the units starts with very accessible theoretical explanations along with numerous examples and is followed by several exercises, for which a key is provided at the end of it. Therefore, this software is quite suitable for self-study.

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