Short answer? — No! Read below

This is a hotly debated topic, which I frequently encounter almost on a daily basis. In this day and age, it is a needless reminder of the importance of learning English, however learning it “correctly” is quite another thing on its own.



Teaching English in Moscow and several Russian regions, one comes across a plethora of “English books” coming from various publishers such as Cambridge Assessment, Oxford University Press, MacMillan, and the Russian flavourings a.k.a Starlight. These books are quite expensive in themselves, with several components such as CD, workbooks, DVD sold separately, and for a budget-conscious student can add to a nice princely sum.

However an underscored importance of “punctuation” is often missing in almost all the books, which in my opinion is the building blocks of English language. The other unintended consequence being — students tend to “memorise” the answers and “complete the book/ workbook” syndrome begins to develop, which in turn hampers their learning and cognitive abilities significantly. As the student grows older, this exacerbates the problem significantly and thus reflects itself during speaking and reasoning skills -> fundamental testing aspect of any English exam, GCSE, A Levels, EGE (Russian), TOEFL, IELTS etc…