Are Books Still Useful for Learning English? 📙📚📖

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 pictures.

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.

Oh, 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.

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, oh, 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,

I can see the words that 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.

Could I, could I have... like they're, they're

teaching phrases where they could have maybe done

a little better job of teaching you the

words that are in those phrases.

So 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. 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?

Um, 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?

Um, 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 practising your speaking,

I think this gets like a B+.

I think it's hard for a book

to really help you practise speaking anyway.

So I think if you need to practise speaking, you

should probably find a tutor or a speaking partner.

But certainly this book will help you

practise 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 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. Phrases:

Match the sentences and say them out loud.

Listen and number the pictures in

the order they are described.

Um, but here we have use 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.

Um, 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.

I know I 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 of 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 minus 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 relations.

I think the power went out briefly there.

It's 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.

Bye.