Grammar for Grownups -- Book Review
Beth Adubato Provides Advice for Improving Public Speaking Skills
Jul 13, 2009
Not to be confused with the more comprehensive reference books Grammar for Grownups by Val Dumond (1994) or Grammar for Grownups: A Self-Paced Training Program for People in Business by Janis Fisher Chan and Diane Lutovich (2003), this Grammar for Grownups is fewer than 50 pages and can be read in an hour or two as preparation for an important meeting or interview.
Unlike Other English Grammar Reference Guides
Author Beth Adubato takes basic ideas that can be found in various writers’ guides such as The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White or The Associated Press Stylebook. Instead of offering lengthy text to answer specific questions about grammar usage as in these and other reference books, she selects particular trouble spots for speakers and illustrates them with examples. These examples of conversation represent what someone might use when talking to clients, being interviewed for a job or by a news reporter, or during any social occasion. The wrong way to speak is in Italics and the correct way is in boldface type.
Memorize Correct Grammar
The author doesn’t teach any tricks for learning proper grammar; instead she encourages readers to “just memorize the right way” and use the correct examples when speaking. Grammar for Grownups has no chapters or index. The book is intended as a handy refresher course with entertaining examples of forgotten rules about grammar to quickly get the point across to the reader.
Aimed at Public Speakers More Than Professional Writers
A long-time broadcast journalist, Adubato mentions the most common mistakes that she has witnessed in people’s speech during interviews. She wrote the book based on the patterns of grammatical errors and mispronunciations that she’s noticed over the years. Even the best-dressed, most prepared speakers can ruin a speech or interview by a careless mispronounced word (for example, “nucular”) or grammatical mistake (for example, “You should have came with us” instead of the correct version “You should have come with us.”
English Grammar Book Provides Interview Tips
Her strategy for cleaning up speech has two parts: “Become aware of the mistakes” and “Practice using the words correctly.” She constructs the book similarly with examples of common mistakes followed by correct usage. Adubato also includes a list of problem words and expressions, including these incorrect spellings based on incorrect pronunciation: “acrosst,” “anyways,” excape,” and heighth.”
Grammar for Grownups seems an ideal guidebook for the average person who wants to improve his or her public speaking skills. People already working in the communications field or in academia probably should stick with more detailed reference books such as the other guides mentioned in this article.
About the Author: Beth Adubato
Adubato (also known as Beth Ellen Patrick) has worked as a freelance television news reporter, television anchor, actress, and part-time lecturer at Rutgers University in the New York City area. She got the idea for writing Grammar for Grownups after noticing that many of her respondents during interviews used improper grammar that made them sound unintelligent or undermined their credibility.
Book Details:
Adubato, Beth. Grammar for Grownups. Outskirts Press. 2009. ISBN: 978-1-4327-1137-5, 41 pages, $11.95 U.S., Communication, Softcover.
For more information about writing skills, read How to Critique a Manuscript and Getting Motivated to Write a Book.
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