Basic English Grammar Workbook (Azar-Hagen, 5th Edition)

Betty Azar's grammar series is the closest thing English language teaching has to a standard text. If you take a TESOL course, this is very likely the book on the syllabus, and if you walk into an adult ESL program anywhere in the world you will find a shelf of it. Basic English Grammar is the entry level of three, sitting below Fundamentals and Understanding and Using English Grammar.

The method is unfashionable and effective. Each unit presents one structure in a chart, then drills it hard through progressively less scaffolded exercises, then moves on. There is no attempt to make it entertaining. What you get instead is completeness and a sequence that has been refined across five editions and several decades of classroom use, so the order things are introduced in genuinely reflects what learners can handle when.

This listing is the workbook rather than the student book, which matters. The workbook contains the practice exercises and a full answer key, and it is designed to be usable for self-study. For a homeschool that makes it more useful than the student book alone, since a parent who is not a trained English teacher can hand it over and check the work. Many families use only the workbook and skip the student book entirely.

Two cautions. First, at around forty dollars it is the most expensive item most home ESL programs will buy, and it is consumable. Second, it is relentlessly written practice, aimed at accuracy rather than fluency. A student working only through Azar will write correct English and speak very little of it. Run it as one track alongside listening and conversation rather than as the whole program.

It suits a motivated older learner, roughly twelve and up, or an adult. It is too dry for younger children, who will do better with visual courses.