1. 1.The COBUILD approach to grammar is simple and direct.

2. 2. We study a large collection of English texts, and find out how people are actually using the language.

3. 3. We pick the most important points and we show how the words and phrases are used by quoting actual examples from our text collection.

4. 4. As a student of English, you can be sure that you are presented with real English, as it is actually used.

5. 5. In this book we give explanations of the most important, frequent, and typical points of English grammar along with a lot of practice material so that you can put the knowledge to use immediately.

6. 6. This makes the book suitable both as a classroom text, and also for private study.

7. 7. This is a grammar of meanings as well as structures.

8. 8. The exercises help you to link the meanings and structures, not just to practice the structures.

9. 9. A key to all the exercises is provided.

10. 10. The grammar is often very direct and easy to understand.

11. 11. Sometimes English speakers and writers prefer a simple structure and only very advanced students need to know more than that.

12. 12. At other times we give more details, because they are necessary for clear understanding and accurate usage.

13. 13. This book has been developed from the same database which was used in the Collins COBUILD English Grammar.

14. 14. It is designed for use by anyone who has enough English to understand the explanations, which we expect to be intermediate and above.

15. 15. This new edition is accompanied by a version of the text on a CD-Rom, which also gives you access to a 5-million word corpus of current English so that you can check your understanding of grammatical points with reference to a corpus.