Are Books Still Useful for Learning English? 📙📚📖
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So the other day I was wondering, are books still useful for learning English? I mean, almost everything you need can be found on the internet. Are books, like old-fashioned books that you can open and flip the pages, are they still useful? So I went online and I did a search for best books for learning English.

And I noticed that when the search results came up, books from a company called DK were often in the mix. You would see a few of them. And I remember when my kids were little, we would check out books from DK publishing because they made really good kids picture books where they could learn new words and see the picture. So I thought, Oh, cool. They have books for learning English as well. And one book in particular stood out to me. It was the book everyday English.

And I thought, you know what? I should order this book. I should order the book and then have a look at it for all of you and let you know what I think about it. So I went to Amazon. I searched for DK Everyday English, I think. And then I ordered the book and I waited for it to arrive. This is the Amazon delivery person bringing us our book. So let's go get it. Hello, how are you? Thank you very much. Have a good night. Okay, we got the book. Hopefully it's good.

Well, here it is. I have my trusty scissors and I have the package from Amazon. Let's open this up and I'll give you my first impressions. In English, first impressions are the first thing you think of something when you first see it. Well, here it is.

English for everyone everyday English from DK publishing learn and practice over 2,500 words and phrases and in the top corner it says with free online audio that's pretty cool I like that feature so my first impressions of the book it's a book I oh there's a lot of illustrations

and other things in it that will make it easy for you to understand what you are learning. So, First Impressions, it looks like a pretty cool book.

Nice table of contents outlining conversation skills, family and relationships, eating and drinking, free time and hobbies, stories and services, work and study, getting around the home, on vacation, health and medicine, media and communication. So my first impression would be that this book covers some very valuable topics. I would say when I look at the table of contents, there's a lot of value here.

So there are two things I wanted to mention before we get started. Number one, this is not a sponsored video. I used my own money to buy the book and I plan to donate it to the ESL department at my school when I'm done reviewing it. And number two, you'll notice I'm not outside today. It is extremely windy outside, so windy that I would not be able to make an English lesson. So today we're inside. So my plan in this video is to kind of talk about six different

ways this book can help you or maybe not help you practice your English. So I'm going to talk about reading, writing, listening, speaking, learning new vocabulary and learning and practicing your grammar. So I'll take about one minute for each of those and let you know what I think.

Let's start by talking about reading. I have my reading glasses on so I can see the words and I can give you my opinion now. I'll say one positive thing and one negative thing about how well this book would help you practice your reading.

The positive thing is this: the book will often show you pictures and then have the vocabulary word beside it so that when you go to read the phrases, you can understand the words that are being used. When I look at the takeout and delivery section, there's a nice little vocabulary chart at the bottom and then the phrases above actually use those vocabulary words. So there's a good connection there between learning some new words

so that you can understand when you read the phrases. However, when I flip to the at the restaurant section, that section isn't as well done. In fact, they teach you some vocabulary, but there's a lot of phrases here that you'll be reading where they haven't taught you all the words, like reservation, to book a table. They're teaching phrases where they could have maybe done a little better job of teaching you the words that are in those phrases.

Overall, I would say I love the pictures. Anytime you can have a picture beside a vocabulary word when you're learning a language, that's just awesome. That gets that two thumbs up from Bob. But maybe I'm being a little bit picky here. I would like to see a little more vocabulary taught or at least an area where you can see what those words mean so you can better understand the phrases you are reading.

so let's talk about listening how will this book help you with your listening it's a book the book doesn't talk does it or does it actually if you go online you'll see that there is

free audio for this book. So when you look at a page like the page I'm looking at at the supermarket, you'll notice there are little listening activities that you can do. The first one, 36.3, listen and circle the item you hear. So it's going to say the word in English and you're going to have to check off or circle the one that you hear. I think that is awesome. Can I help you?

Oh, 36.2, listen and number the sentences in the order you hear them. So basically it's taking sentences that you read in the section above and kind of testing and quizzing you on them. I think that's just great. So you can practice your reading, but then once you've done some reading, you can do the free listening activities to practice your listening. So what would I give it? How would I rate it on listening?

I have no negative comment for listening. I think in terms of listening, I think this book does a really good job.

So let's talk about speaking. How does a book help you with your speaking? Really, the only way that a book can help you with your speaking is if you say out loud the things you are reading or the things you are hearing with the free audio component. I actually think this book does a pretty good job in terms of speaking. When I'm looking at section 68 at the airport, it actually gives you some little mini practice conversation.

It says our flight is delayed. Typical. Oh, well, let's grab a coffee. That's actually something you would hear at an airport. Do you need any help? How does the bag drop work? I actually had this problem the last time I was at the airport. So I do like the idea that it's prompting you to practice these little mini conversations in terms of a negative, though, I would say this the audio portion

I don't think makes you practice speaking enough.

a lot of the audio portion would be things like, listen and number the pictures in order. Listen and number the sentences in order. But it doesn't always prompt you to say things out loud. Although I'm noticing right now, section 68.11, match the sentences and say them out loud. So I guess maybe that critique was a little too early. So overall, in terms of practicing your speaking, I think this gets like a B+.

I think it's hard for a book to really help you practice speaking anyway. So I think if you need to practice speaking, you should probably find a tutor or a speaking partner. But certainly this book will help you practice the repetition, saying things out loud and those kinds of things. So yeah, what did I say? B plus, B plus for speaking.

so let's talk about writing does this book help you practice your writing well one critique i would have is that many of the practice exercises ask you to circle things or check things off it's not very often that the book asks you to write something so section 74 staying in a hotel we see you know listen to person a and respond as person b so that's good for speaking listen and circle the item you hear so you're just circling um

phrases, match the sentences and say them out loud, listen and number the pictures in the order they are described. But here we have used the chart to create eight sentences and say them out loud. I actually like that. So again, maybe I was a little bit too negative too early.

They have a nice little chart, 74.12. Starts with, could I have a club sandwich brought to my room, please? So you can build a little sentence there. And I would make sure that you do actually write them. It might be tempting here to just say them out loud, but I would write them down as well. So maybe I will be a little critical there. It probably should say there, use the chart to create eight sentences, write them down and say them out loud.

So just kind of going through the staying in a hotel section. There's a matching, so you're not practicing a lot of writing there. Say sentences out loud. Say the sentences out loud, filling in the blanks, using the words in the panel.

So that's pretty good. You're actually writing a word, but I would actually suggest you take it one step further and actually write the entire sentence in your notebook to practice your writing as well. So I think in terms of writing, I know, did I give a B plus for something? And did I give like a one up? I don't know what my grading scale is here, but I would say B for writing. I would say I'm going to give it a B for writing.

Okay, let's talk a little bit about how well the book will help you learn vocabulary. I would say that in some sections it doesn't do a good job at all and in other sections it's amazing.

So in section 80, health and medicine, it basically shows you all the parts of the body. It talks about illness and injury, and every word is clearly linked to an image. So that is amazing. Staying in a hotel. Did that section have? Yes, at the bottom of page 186, section 74.9, vocabulary at the hotel. I love those little tidbits.

vocabulary just those little boxes that help you with the section that you are in and again I love it when a word has an image beside it so vocabulary sometimes it does it really well sometimes it might leave you wanting more but overall I would give it an A- for vocabulary

So grammar, how well will this book teach you grammar? Well, this book does not explicitly teach you grammar. It's not meant to be a grammar book. So what will happen is you will kind of learn grammar through immersion as you read the phrases and learn the phrases. The hope is that you will learn some grammar. So I would say this is not the best book for learning grammar. You will learn a lot of phrases.

and in those phrases you will see how the sentence is put together and that will help you a little bit. My recommendation has always been buy a book

written in your own language that teaches English grammar. That can be very, very helpful. So I would probably give this book like a C minus for grammar, but I think I'm being unfair because this book isn't designed to teach you verb tenses and how to use phrasal verbs. There's actually another book for that, I think from the same company for phrasal verbs. So anyways, not meant to teach grammar. So I feel like I'm judging it a little too harshly.

But yes, I would give it a C- for grammar.

So here are my final thoughts on this book, English for Everyone, Everyday English from DK Publishing. I would say overall, this is a good book. I do think books are still a useful tool when learning a language. What I like about the book is that the topics it covers, remember when I read over the table of contents, were just great topics. You know, stores and services, work and study, on vacation, media and culture,

relations. I think the power went out briefly there. Again, it's quite windy outside today, so that's why I'm inside making this video. But anyways, the topics it covers are quite well done. Also, losing my train of thought here as the lights go on and off a few more times, but maybe you didn't believe me that it's too windy outside, but it's so windy it's affecting the electricity. So anyways, the topics are good.

I think that if you look at it, it has, I think, 96 different sections. I think if you were to plan, yes, 96. If you were to plan to study this over 96 days, I think that would be quite manageable and it would be very worthwhile. I should mention as well that it does have the answers at the back for all of the activities that you can do. Again,

This is not a sponsored video, but I do think this is a pretty cool book. They do have a lot of other ones as well, but I like this one because it's everyday English and they do deliver on that. It's definitely a good book to learn everyday English. Like section 72, On Vacation, just will teach you a whole bunch of really good words.

that you'll need to know. Anyways, I'm Bob the Canadian. This was my first book review. I think it was a little rough. I think I could have done a better job, but we'll see. Maybe I'll do another one in the future. But thanks for watching. If this is your first time here, don't forget to click that red subscribe button. Give me a thumbs up and leave a comment below. What do you think?

Are books still useful for learning English or have they been replaced with the internet as a great source of learning? Anyways, thanks for watching. I'll see you in a few days with another English lesson. Hi, Bob the Canadian here. Thank you for listening to this English podcast lesson. If you would like to support me in the work that I do as an online English teacher, please visit patreon.com slash bobthecanadian.