Reviewed by Christopher Walker
If you haven’t by now heard of Hugh Dellar, you have either spent the last decade under a rock, or you are new to ELT (or, frankly, both). Along with his comrade in arms Andrew Walkley, Hugh has been engaged in countering many of the myths and delusions of our industry, either by writing coursebooks that engage with real English, or through the activities of the Lexical Lab, or by maintaining a strong presence on social media. It is the last of these that proved the inspiration for this book – a collection of the best or most interesting questions that Dellar and Walkley have been asked on their Facebook group.
This is the second of Dellar’s books that I have read, the first being Grammar Nonsense, and there are clear similarities between the two. Dellar has no truck with the likes of reported speech – something that I agree with whole-heartedly – and puts contextual understanding at the heart of all his responses to the questions this book is built around.
50 Questions could be split into two sections, the first dealing with common queries of a grammatical nature, the rest considering more lexical dilemmas. In the first half we meet several questions about countable versus uncountable nouns, used to versus would, and the correct time to use the perfect form. The lexical side is dominated by disambiguation – wait on versus wait for, historic versus historical, big versus large, and so on. Though it would have been good for the book to have made the difference between grammatical and lexical concerns clearer – there is a lot of switching between the two, with the result that the book is a touch shapeless – there isn’t as much repetition of explanations as you would expect. This is not just a case of someone with a popular blog hitting Ctrl-P and hoping for the best.
Dellar writes in a conversational tone – this is an approachable book, and novice teachers (and those who have never heard of Fowler, Bryson, or Amis père) will get a lot from each short chapter that they can rely on when asked similar questions by their students. That said, students who are hoping to learn much from the book will need to read slowly and carefully – the guidance on Facebook is often delivered more simply and clearly than it is here at times, and students below B2 level might find themselves scratching their heads at some of Dellar’s longer, windier sentences.
There is much that I am in agreement with here. Dellar rightly points out that the modal verb will can be used to talk about future time, but that does not make it in and of itself the future simple: “whilst it is used to refer to the future most of the time, it can also be used to talk about now and even […] about the past […] Like all modal verbs , will reflects a certain perspective or attitude that the speaker has towards a situation at the time of speaking.” I couldn’t have put it better myself (even though I have tried!).
Reported speech, as noted earlier, comes in for another dose of criticism, with Dellar here at his most vitriolic: “[N]othing is more bizarrely and unnecessarily taught in ELT than reported speech. I honestly can’t think of any area of the language that leads to so many bizarre sentences being foisted on students or that induces such high degrees of grammar anxiety in learners for such little real – world gain.” Again, you’ll hear no demurring from me, and I live in hope that coursebook writers (Dellar excepted, obviously) will soon find a better way to deal with reported forms – or will skip them altogether.
There is also criticism of the single-line sentence. Language that is decontextualised cannot be learnt in a meaningful way, and so exercises that decontextualise language are ineffective – or worse. They can lead to learners going online in search of answers; as Dellar wisely points out, sometimes the question itself is at fault: “Students don’t always ask the right questions – and that teachers don’t always realise this , and so sometimes end up worrying about things that aren’t the real problems.” I’ve seen this myself countless times in the classroom, with students asking if what they’re saying is correct before they’ve finished saying it. Sometimes what they want to say is not what they think – a point well made in a workshop by Glenn Standish on idioms, who suggested that set expressions like “It’s raining cats and dogs” should be avoided in favour of saying, “It’s bucketing down” or “It’s pouring” – both of which better represent what the student wants to communicate.
I enjoyed reading 50 Questions, but I was often left wanting more. The answers that Dellar offers are suitable for those looking to dip briefly into the topic, much like visitors to the Facebook group; but squeezing fifty questions into one hundred and fifty pages was always going to lead to a kind of superficiality of approach. The chapter on Passives does not mention topicalisation or the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs – and I think both are crucial in leading students to a full understanding of the voice. The chapter on If I were is fine though could have gone deeper into the history of the English language, considering for at least a sentence the fact that we used to have a subjunctive form like that found in many other languages.
These, though, are quibbles. Those who feel they might benefit from a book like this definitely will benefit from this book. They will certainly feel more confident in fielding the sorts of questions that students are liable to ask – and they will pick up a few tips on how to reframe the conversation so that the answers become all the more resonant.
Your Top 50 English Questions Answered is available here on Amazon.
