This volume provides a readable, interactive, and complete introduction to basic areas of English grammar that includes words and sentences, parts of speech and their role in sentences, verb patterns, clauses and phrases, and areas of vocabulary including word class, word formation, and jargon. The text aims “to encourage [students] to analyze the language that [they] hear and read in [their] daily life” (pp. vii–viii). It does so in two ways. First, concepts are presented inductively; that is, readers are asked to work with language samples—many authentic excerpts of written and spoken text—in order to understand the concepts before the author explains key ideas. These interactive tasks encourage readers to play with language, drawing on and extending what they already know about English grammar and vocabulary. Second, it uses grammar terminology consistently and sparingly, a wise decision given that the book's target readers are new to the field.

This British text adopts a format that is quite novel in comparison to similar texts published in the United States. Rather than presenting all information about a single topic in one long chapter, the book adopts a modular format that breaks down the treatment of each topic into four sections; each section considers the same topics in increasing complexity and depth and provides increasingly rich discourse contexts. The first section introduces concepts and terms associated with the topics covered in the book. The second section subdivides each topic further, providing even more linguistic information. The third section asks readers to apply concepts learned in the previous two sections to longer stretches of discourse. The final section comprises a collection of excerpted chapters from books by experts on the various topics covered in the first three sections. This approach to conveying linguistic concepts allows instructors to use the text flexibly and acknowledges that students—especially in applied linguistics programs—do not all come to the field with the same background in the study of grammar or linguistics.

Jackson is also bold in using the textbook format to teach grammatical and lexical concepts inductively. Although the approach adopted here flouts standard university lecture-style presentation of information and might not appeal to students who are deductive learners, it will appeal to many students and instructors. Additionally, such a task-based approach lends itself well to self-study. The tasks themselves are thoughtfully constructed and useful. Unlike many texts that present the same basic grammatical and lexical concepts, the author makes a concerted effort to move students beyond working at the word or sentence level. Most of the tasks in the third section ask students to locate grammatical structures within extended texts and specify their meaning and function. Even when the task requires readers to work with isolated, invented sentences, the result is a greater understanding of functional or semantic constraints of the given forms. In a typical sentence-based activity, students examine verbs in sentences to determine whether all verbs are “doing words” (p. 37), an innovative way to distinguish verb lexical aspect.

A final noteworthy aspect of the book is its consistent treatment of lexical and semantic issues. Like most books of its type, this volume covers such topics as word classes, word morphology, and processes for word formation. Unlike other volumes, this coverage is detailed and extends to comprehensive discussions of jargon, dialect, and specialized vocabulary. However, the fact that the vocabulary sections draw largely on British English might be problematic for some readers. The author makes an excellent effort to include vocabulary items from many World Englishes; nonetheless, the words in some of the vocabulary-focused tasks are drawn from British English and its many dialects and will be difficult to work with for readers outside the United Kingdom.

Although it has much to commend it, this volume will have a hard time finding a home in the American teaching and learning context. Although it would make an excellent text in an “Introduction to Language” course for undergraduates in a linguistics department, it seems perhaps less appropriate in Applied Linguistics MA programs because the material presented is too basic and not focused in such a way as to be easily adopted for pedagogical grammar courses. For this reason, it is likely to be used as a resource text but not adopted as a course text.