In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules which influences the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given language. It is the systematic study and description of a language, and it helps us to understand how words and their component parts combine to form sentences. Writing perfect sentences is not easy, and when writing is poorly punctuated and contains grammatical errors, it is extremely difficult to read and sometimes impossible to understand. If the reader has to go back and re-read a sentence several times because he or she is not quite sure what the sentence means, it spoils the reading experience and readers are quite likely to misunderstand the point or even give up and not read any further. If the reader happens to be an examiner or a university admissions officer, the consequences as such are absolutely what students or applicants cannot afford.

Learning a new language can be tedious. Sometimes it feels like a chore, and many times people give up before they have even learned the basics. Perhaps, this is due to the fact that many traditional methods of language teaching have become so predictable and monotonous that they’re just plain boring. Our books aim to change that. The Icon English Reading Success is a series of books, each intended for your use when learning English either with a teacher in a classroom or independently. Within these pages, you’ll find something few language books offer: a story. Using the narrative form, Stages I and II follow the Martin family through their daily lives. Master the present tense and learn new verbs while following Mr. Martin on an average workday at the hospital. Come to understand various grammar rules as the Martin children do things like learn to play guitar, apply for college, and act in the school play. Grasp strange new tenses like present perfect or future continuous as Mrs. Martin tries to balance her work life with her sometimes-chaotic home life.

First let's take a look at the study sets. These are created by your classroom teacher, who will add vocab words covered during class into the online study set. Each unit consists of 6 different tools. Learn will give you vocabulary words, for which you will enter the translation of the word in your first language. Spell lets you hear those English words read aloud, after which you will type what you hear. Flashcards will show you a word in English and test you on what kind of word it is (noun, preposition, adjective, etc.) and what that word means. Test, as I'm sure you guessed, will test you on the words you've learned through a mix of fill-in-the-blank, matching, multiple choice, and true/false questions.

Learning English grammar can be tedious when learning activities become as monotonous as memorising grammar rules. English grammar should be viewed and learned as a whole, rather than thousands of separate rules. The emphasis throughout the series is on Wholistic Grammar - the meaning and use of the grammatical forms as a whole. Special attention is given to the parts of speech in English, the key points that are often problems for learners who use English as their second language, such as the meaning of the different verb forms, the functions of words, the tenses, or the complexity of sentence structures. A "part of speech" is also known as "word classes," an important concept in English, which is referred to as one of the eight main categories into which words are classified according to the “part” they play in a sentence. Learning the names of the parts of speech does not help a learner speak or write English better. However, once a learner gains a basic understanding of the eight parts of speech, learning sentence structures and the English language can be much easier. The parts of speech are the building blocks of grammar, and the Icon English Grammar Success helps learners acquire the knowledge and skills they need to use those “blocks” properly. Of course, the verb is the most important "block" of the English language.