The story begins in 1973, in the offices of The Atlantic Monthly, in Boston, where a young freelance writer named Tracy Kidder came looking for an assignment. Richard Todd was the editor who encouraged him. From that article grew a lifelong association. Before long, Kidder’s The Soul of a New Machine, the first book the two worked on together, had won the Pulitzer Prize. It was a heady moment, but for Kidder and Todd it was only the beginning of an education in the art of nonfiction.Good Prose explores three major nonfiction forms: narratives, essays, and memoirs. Kidder and Todd draw candidly, sometimes comically, on their own experience—their mistakes as well as accomplishments—to demonstrate the pragmatic ways in which creative problems get solved. They also turn to the works of a wide range of writers, novelists as well as nonfiction writers, for models and instruction. They talk about narrative strategies (and about how to find a story, sometimes in surprising places), about the ethical challenges of nonfiction, and about the realities of making a living as a writer. They offer some tart and emphatic opinions on the current state of language. And they take a clear stand against playing loose with the facts. Their advice is always grounded in the practical world of writing and publishing.Good Prose—like Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style—is a succinct, authoritative, and entertaining arbiter of standards in contemporary writing, offering guidance for the professional writer and the beginner alike. This wise and useful book is the perfect companion for anyone who loves to read good books and longs to write one.

    This step-by-step approach gives you real confidence and the tools you need to achieve a high Spanish proficiency.You'll get a quick review of the key grammar basics, then move on to more advanced topics that you need for true mastery of the language. With complete coverage of verb tenses beyond the present and past, irregular verbs, sentence structure, parts of speech, and more, this book gives a thorough overview of advanced grammar topics. It also introduces you to hundreds of new vocabulary words that are reinforced with readings that put the new terms in everyday context.

    The author employs insights from contemporary linguistic theories and builds them into a coherent system firmly rooted in traditional models. Focusing on the idea that students learn grammar by actually doing grammar, he provides down-to-earth explanations about the composition of English sentences, illustrating them at every step with diagrams and other visual models. The author constructs a sensible, even hospitable, approach to grammar. Doing Grammar, 3/e, features real, provocative, and intelligent sentences as examples and exercises. This new edition offers expanded coverage of parts of speech, using both traditional and descriptive explanations to provide definitions of nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions. It also features updated sentence exercises, clear diagrams, and an appendix containing answers to half the exercises.

    In the fifth edition of this renowned advanced grammar textbook, the new author Dallin D. Oaks of Brigham Young University has preserved Stageberg's clear and concise linguistic approach to grammar instruction while updating the text for the 1990s advanced grammar student. Updated chapter material includes revised examples of an exercises for the material studied and the use of tree diagrams. In addition, the fifth edition emphasizes the significance of English grammar in speech and composition in two new chapters: Usage and Language Variation: Historical, Regional, and Social. Two new appendices--A Basic Introduction to Tree Diagramming and An Introduction to Transformational Grammar--provide further instruction regarding the use of tree diagrams and an overview of Transformational Generative-Grammar. As in previous editions, AN INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH GRAMMAR, Fifth Edition, provides a linguistic approach to grammar instruction that can be used to teach both advanced grammar and composition as well as non-major introductory linguistics courses.

    The authors use multiple sources, including biographies and dialogues, to increase student interest and involvement with the material, and encourage students to regard becoming a teacher a positive challenge.

    We spin fantasies. We devour novels, films, and plays. Even sporting events and criminal trials unfold as narratives. Yet the world of story has long remained an undiscovered and unmapped country. It’s easy to say that humans are “wired” for story, but why?In this delightful and original book, Jonathan Gottschall offers the first unified theory of storytelling. He argues that stories help us navigate life’s complex social problems—just as flight simulators prepare pilots for difficult situations. Storytelling has evolved, like other behaviors, to ensure our survival.Drawing on the latest research in neuroscience, psychology, and evolutionary biology, Gottschall tells us what it means to be a storytelling animal. Did you know that the more absorbed you are in a story, the more it changes your behavior? That all children act out the same kinds of stories, whether they grow up in a slum or a suburb? That people who read more fiction are more empathetic?Of course, our story instinct has a darker side. It makes us vulnerable to conspiracy theories, advertisements, and narratives about ourselves that are more “truthy” than true. National myths can also be terribly dangerous: Hitler’s ambitions were partly fueled by a story.But as Gottschall shows in this remarkable book, stories can also change the world for the better. Most successful stories are moral—they teach us how to live, whether explicitly or implicitly, and bind us together around common values. We know we are master shapers of story. The Storytelling Animal finally reveals how stories shape us.

    Now fully up to date, including many terms connected with the Internet and electronic communication. 4,500 words and meanings are new to this edition. Excellent coverage of both British and American English, and colloquial as well as formal English. All information is authenticated by the British National Corpus and the Corpus of American English. There are explanations of common symbols (e.g. @), which are not included in any major competitor, and notes on interesting word origins. Easy to use, with a rapid-access page design, shortcuts to the right meaning in long entries, and easy definitions using a carefully chosen defining vocabulary of 3,000 words. Numerous illustrations, including 8 pages in full colour, show vocabulary items in related groups, 10 illustrated topic pages provide essential vocabulary, and show how to use it, and vocabulary notes show students how to improve and enrich their writing.

    Throughout, the emphasis is on promoting a plain English style. This little book can help you communicate more effectively by showing you how to enliven your sentences.

    Once they begin to learn a language, adults may be further discouraged when they find the methods used to teach children don’t seem to work for them. What is an adult language learner to do? In this book, Richard Roberts and Roger Kreuz draw on insights from psychology and cognitive science to show that adults can master a foreign language if they bring to bear the skills and knowledge they have honed over a lifetime. Adults shouldn’t try to learn as children do; they should learn like adults.Roberts and Kreuz report evidence that adults can learn new languages even more easily than children. Children appear to have only two advantages over adults in learning a language: they acquire a native accent more easily, and they do not suffer from self-defeating anxiety about learning a language. Adults, on the other hand, have the greater advantages—gained from experience—of an understanding of their own mental processes and knowing how to use language to do things. Adults have an especially advantageous grasp of pragmatics, the social use of language, and Roberts and Kreuz show how to leverage this metalinguistic ability in learning a new language.Learning a language takes effort. But if adult learners apply the tools acquired over a lifetime, it can be enjoyable and rewarding.

    James Paul Gee begins his new book with 'I want to talk about vide games- yes, even violent video games - and say some positive things about them'. With this simple but explosive beginning, one of America's most well-respected professors of education looks seriously at the good that can come from playing video games. Gee is interested in the cognitive development that can occur when someone is trying to escape a maze, find a hidden treasure and, even, blasting away an enemy with a high-powered rifle. Talking about his own video-gaming experience learning and using games as diverse as Lara Croft and Arcanum, Gee looks at major specific cognitive activities: How individuals develop a sense of identity; How one grasps meaning; How one evaluates and follows a command; How one picks a role model; How one perceives the world.

    Mick Short considers how meanings and effects are generated in the three major literary genres, carying out stylistic analysis of poetry, drama and prose fiction in turn. He analyses a wide range of extracts from English literature, adopting an accessible approach to the analysis of literary texts which can be applied easily to other texts in English and in other languages.

    This is a practical way to learn the aspects of language that you’ll actually need and use; from booking a hotel room to navigating a menu, Paul will effortlessly build your confidence and give you the tools to handle any holiday situation.His ‘word robbery’ will also help unlock the range of vocabulary you already know. By making a few simple tweaks, you’ll go from fantastic to fantastique.Ideal for first-time learners or people who struggled in school, this book will help you absorb information quickly and efficiently, just like you did learning English as a child. Forget the way you used to be taught; this course guarantees you minimum effort and maximum success without the need for complex grammar rules or jargon. With thousands of satisfied customers, there’s never been a better time to learn.“There is nothing so complicated in foreign languages that it cannot be made simple.” Paul NobleA quick, easy and fun way to unlock your basic language skills. Perfect for beginners, this book will give you all the information you need to build basic conversations and get by on your travels.

    It contains everything the student needs to know about the psychology of language, including how we acquire, understand, produce, and store language. The third edition contains new chapters on how children learn to read, and how language is used in everyday settings. It also describes recent research on the impact of new techniques of brain imaging.The text is comprehensive and written in a lively and accessible style. It covers all the main topics in this complex field, focusing on reading, writing, speaking, and listening in both adult and child language. There is an emphasis on language processing as well as language production and coverage of the social basis of language. The text covers recent connectionist models of language, describing complex ideas in a clear and approachable manner. Following a strong developmental theme, the text describes how children acquire language (sometimes more than one), and also how they learn to read. The Psychology of Language also demonstrates how language is related to the brain and to other aspects of cognition.The Psychology of Language assumes no prior knowledge other than a grounding in the basic concepts of cognitive psychology. This third edition of this bestselling textbook will be essential reading for any student of cognition, psycholinguistics or the psychology of language. It will also be useful for those on speech and language therapy courses.

    Many students are bored and disengaged Teachers are handcuffed by outdated textbooks, standardized curriculum, and disinterested students. What if you could solve these problems immediately and excite even your most reluctant learners daily? Read it Today and Engage tomorrow! 33-year veteran teacher, author, presenter, and engagement guru James Alan Sturtevant makes it easy, with incredible teacher tips and tools for both the veteran and student teacher--50 engagement tools that you can begin using right now, with no special training or boring professional development. Easily rebrand your class and connect with all students Are you the teacher students "hate"? Do kids groan when they walk into your classroom? Engaging learners is all about connecting and making education fun. With Sturtevant's education tips and creative teaching tools, students will rebrand you and your class as their favorites. Best of all, they'll engage with every lesson you teach, every single day! 50 Tips and Tools Unlike other education books that weigh you down with archaic research and impossible-to-implement strategies, Hacking Engagement, the 7th book in the popular Hack Learning Series, provides 50 unique, exciting, and actionable tips and tools that you can apply right now. And there's something here for every teacher--no matter what grade or subject you teach. Try one of these amazing engagement strategies tomorrow: Engage the Enraged Create Celebrity Couple Nicknames Hash out a Hashtag Empower Students to Help You Uncover Your Biases Avoid the Great War on Yoga Pants Let Your Freak Flag Fly Become a Proponent of the Exponent Trade Blah, Blah, Blah for Zen Transform Your Class into a Focus Group Commit to Engagement Try at least one tip or tool now and witness an amazing transformation in your classroom and school. Are you ready to engage? Scroll up and grab your copy of Hacking Engagement now.

    And the key to learning how to read effectively is recognizing the sounds that letters and words represent. With the help of the revolutionary system known as Phono-Graphix™, you and your child can discover the sound-picture code that is the foundation of the written English language.Help your child unlock the sound-picture code. An effective and easy-to-understand approach, Phono-Graphix enables you to teach your child to read in one-tenth the time of phonics with a 100 percent success rate. In just eleven weeks, you can bring your kindergartner to first-grade-level reading—even learning-disabled children can reach grade level or higher in just twelve weeks. Reading Reflex provides you with: -Simple diagnostic tests to determine your child's reading level, and a Literacy Growth Chart so you'll know what goals to establish -Detailed instructions and illustrations to help your child develop strong, consistent reading skills and to correct ineffective reading strategies such as part-word reading and memorizing -Fun and easy-to-follow exercises, hands-on materials, worksheets, stories, and games that you and your child can do together -Enjoyable lessons that are carefully constructed to meet the interests and capabilities of children of all ages