<p>Hi, English is not my first language. Since I went to high school in the US, I am very good speaking. Unfortunately, I am really bad in English grammer. Would you guys please tell me some tricks/tips/books to help me improve my grammer? I wanna be able to write freely, without stressing whether my sentences are grammatically correct or not.</p>
<p>thanks!!!!!!</p>
<p>Read regularly! </p>
<p>Also the Bedford Handbook…I believe it’s by John M Lannon is a nice reference.</p>
<p>Read a chapter a day (about 12 pages+) over a course of 60 days and you’ll be a pro!</p>
<p>Memorize a list of some common idiomatic prepositional phrases (phew, that’s long). I notice you missed two - “good at” and “bad at”. It’s a common thing for ESL, it’ll probably help tremendously. :)</p>
<p>And read of course.</p>
<p>It’s grammar :).</p>
<p>Personally, I think the best way is to read books about English grammar. These bore a lot of people, so try to get some of the more entertaining ones. I hear Eats, Shoots, and Leaves by Lynne Truss is quite good. I have this great little book of grammar that I can read in one sitting.</p>
<p>Reading, of novels, non-fiction, newspapers, whatever, is helpful too. If you read a lot, you can often remember a couple sentences as examples that are sometimes more helpful than knowing the grammar rules themselves.</p>
<p>I think reading is key. Second to that - this is going to sound so CC of me - study for the SAT Writing section. Sound strange? The SAT Writing section tends to test the same handful of rules over and over again. The SAT tests very common mistakes that are difficult to spot but easy to fix. I would also say to focus on what’s least colloquially accepted and go from there. Worry about big mistakes (my friends and I went vs. me and my friends went) and, once you’ve mastered that (if you ever do - I’m a native English speaker and I have plenty of trouble) worry about the finer points of grammar, such as never ending a sentence with a preposition.</p>
<p>P.S. - Neat trick I learned studying for the SAT. You don’t have to say “whether or not.” When you say “whether,” it accounts for the “or not” implicitly. Also, a fellow CCer confirmed that for the most part, all punctuation goes INSIDE quotation marks.</p>
<p>I don’t know why actually. If the sentence sounds weird when I say it, then there is something wrong with the sentence. Take this:</p>
<p>Peter are sad.</p>
<p>It just sounds weird.</p>
<p>Pick up a copy of The Elements of Style by Strunk & White. Quite an awesome book, and the tone itself is humorous. It’s small (and cheap!), too.</p>
<p>Write. Write all the time. Write when there’s a commercial on the TV, write when you can’t sleep at night, write while you’re waiting for the bus to come…fine, maybe that’s more writing than you want to do, but you get my point.</p>
<p>The thing about writing is that the more you do it, the better you’ll get at pin pointing your own mistakes and difficulties. Whether it’s making up stories or writing on something you saw in the paper, it really does help you to enhance and develop skills. :)</p>
<p>Hey I can help you. Go to [this</a> link](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/high-school-life/839958-official-never-ending-story-thread.html#post1063827597]this”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/high-school-life/839958-official-never-ending-story-thread.html#post1063827597).</p>
<p>1) Read books written in standard English. Avoid stylized authors, like Shakespeare, like the plague.
2) Write SAT-style essays, then edit them. Do this at least 3x per week.
3) Read “The Elements of Style” (or similar books) once through, and use it as a guide to edit essays.
4) If you can, ask your English teacher for a grammar workbook. They are helpful.</p>