Whether you are a native speaker who wants to sharpen their verbal toolkit, or a non-native speaker who wants to learn how to navigate the English language maze, this book will provide you with information and techniques for instant improvement and lifelong learning. Maybe you want to improve your presentation skills. Perhaps you want to tel more interesting and engaging stories. Or maybe you simply want to become more articulate in your day-to-day use of English. Whatever your needs, your goal is to improve your English, and Launch Your English can guide you to do just that. In this book you'll learn how to: • become more creative and descriptive in your English usage • capture people's attention with your vivid and enhanced expressions • break English down into building blocks for easy improvement • select the right word and expression to articulate your thoughts exactly Free resources for students of English -> SirEnglish.com

    You'll never be lost for words again.

    His previous books, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Blank Slate, have catapulted him into the limelight as one of today's most important and popular science writers. Now, in The Stuff of Thought, Pinker marries two of the subjects he knows best: language and human nature. The result is a fascinating look at how our words explain our nature. What does swearing reveal about our emotions? Why does innuendo disclose something about relationships? Pinker reveals how our use of prepositions and tenses taps into peculiarly human concepts of space and time, and how our nouns and verbs speak to our notions of matter. Even the names we give our babies have important things to say about our relations to our children and to society. With his signature wit and style, Pinker takes on scientific questions like whether language affects thought, as well as forays into everyday life: why is bulk e-mail called spam and how do romantic comedies get such mileage out of the ambiguities of dating? The Stuff of Thought is a brilliantly crafted and highly readable work that will appeal to fans of readers of everything from The Selfish Gene and Blink to Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

    In the last fifty years, we've zoomed through radically different forms of communication, from typewriters to tablet computers, text messages to tweets. We generate more and more words with each passing day. Hiding in that deluge of language are amazing insights into who we are, how we think, and what we feel.In The Secret Life of Pronouns, social psychologist and language expert James W. Pennebaker uses his groundbreaking research in computational linguistics-in essence, counting the frequency of words we use-to show that our language carries secrets about our feelings, our self-concept, and our social intelligence. Our most forgettable words, such as pronouns and prepositions, can be the most revealing: their patterns are as distinctive as fingerprints.Using innovative analytic techniques, Pennebaker X-rays everything from Craigslist advertisements to the Federalist Papers-or your own writing, in quizzes you can take yourself-to yield unexpected insights. Who would have predicted that the high school student who uses too many verbs in her college admissions essay is likely to make lower grades in college? Or that a world leader's use of pronouns could reliably presage whether he led his country into war? You'll learn why it's bad when politicians use "we" instead of "I," what Lady Gaga and William Butler Yeats have in common, and how Ebenezer Scrooge's syntax hints at his self-deception and repressed emotion. Barack Obama, Sylvia Plath, and King Lear are among the figures who make cameo appearances in this sprightly, surprising tour of what our words are saying-whether we mean them to or not.

    Born from the ideas and research in her much-loved Teaching Grammar in Context, and benefiting from the creativity of her colleague Jonathan Bush, this new resource goes even further to bring the best research, theory, and practices into the classroom. Grammar to Enrich and Enhance Writing is three helpful books in one. In the first part, Weaver outlines the latest theories, research, and principles that underlie high-quality grammar instruction for writing. She demonstrates that specific, effective grammar-teaching practices: address all of the 6 Traits of writing instructionemphasize depth, not breadthshould be positive, productive, and practical-not stodgy, correct, and limitingmust be incorporated throughout the writing process, not broken out in isolated units.In part two, Weaver links theory and practice. Her explicit, classroom-proven teaching ideas, strategies, and lessons address key subjects as diverse as helping students make better stylistic use of modifiers, incorporating grammar into revision, and mapping grammar instruction to the curriculum. Mostly in part three, she invites members of the field into a discussion of high-quality grammar instruction. Jeff Anderson (Mechanically Inclined)Rebecca Wheeler (Code-Switching), and other practicing teachers describe their teaching-how they model the vital role grammar plays in guiding students through the editing process, how they respond to student errors, how they help English Language Learners edit for conventional English, and how grammar supports code-switching among speakers of African American English. Like Weaver's, their ideas are ready for immediate classroom implementation. With all this, plus a brief primer on crucial grammatical concepts, Grammar to Enrich and Enhance Writing is what teachers have been waiting for: an up-to-date, ready-to-use, comprehensive resource for leading students to a better understanding of grammar as an aid to more purposeful, detailed, and sophisticated writing. To request this title as a Desk/Exam copy, click here.

    Metaphor, the authors explain, is a fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects. Because such metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experience, they are "metaphors we live by", metaphors that can shape our perceptions and actions without our ever noticing them.In this updated edition of Lakoff and Johnson's influential book, the authors supply an afterword surveying how their theory of metaphor has developed within the cognitive sciences to become central to the contemporary understanding of how we think and how we express our thoughts in language.

    Employing examples of world literature from ancient times to the present, he provides a conceptual framework for the examination of literature. In four brilliant essays on historical, ethical, archetypical, and rhetorical criticism, he applies "scientific" method in an effort to change the character of criticism from the casual to the causal, from the random and intuitive to the systematic.Harold Bloom contributes a fascinating and highly personal preface that examines Frye's mode of criticism and thought (as opposed to Frye's criticism itself) as being indispensable in the modern literary world.

    William Safire, the author of the New York Times Magazine column "On Language," homes in on the "essential misrules of grammar," those mistakes that call attention to the major rules and regulations of writing. He tells you the correct way to write and then tells you when it is all right to break the rules. In this lighthearted guide, he chooses the most common and perplexing concerns of writers new and old. Each mini-chapter starts by stating a misrule like "Don't use Capital letters without good REASON." Safire then follows up with solid and entertaining advice on language, grammar, and life. He covers a vast territory from capitalization, split infinitives (it turns out you can split one if done meaningfully), run-on sentences, and semi-colons to contractions, the double negative, dangling participles, and even onomatopoeia. Originally published under the title Fumblerules.

    But now, acclaimed linguist Guy Deutscher has dared to reopen the issue. Can culture influence language —and vice versa? Can different languages lead their speakers to different thoughts? Could our experience of the world depend on whether our language has a word for "blue"?Challenging the consensus that the fundaments of language are hard-wired in our genes and thus universal, Deutscher argues that the answer to all these questions is—yes. In thrilling fashion, he takes us from Homer to Darwin, from Yale to the Amazon, from how to name the rainbow to why Russian water —a "she"— becomes a "he" once you dip a tea bag into her, demonstrating that language does in fact reflect culture in ways that are anything but trivial.

    “ —The Washington Post A truly original book in every sense of the word, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows poetically defines emotions that we all feel but don’t have the words to express—until now. Have you ever wondered about the lives of each person you pass on the street, realizing that everyone is the main character in their own story, each living a life as vivid and complex as your own? That feeling has a name: “sonder.” Or maybe you’ve watched a thunderstorm roll in and felt a primal hunger for disaster, hoping it would shake up your life. That’s called “lachesism.” Or you were looking through old photos and felt a pang of nostalgia for a time you’ve never actually experienced. That’s “anemoia.” If you’ve never heard of these terms before, that’s because they didn’t exist until John Koenig set out to fill the gaps in our language of emotion. The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows “creates beautiful new words that we need but do not yet have,” says John Green, bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars. By turns poignant, relatable, and mind-bending, the definitions include whimsical etymologies drawn from languages around the world, interspersed with otherworldly collages and lyrical essays that explore forgotten corners of the human condition—from “astrophe,” the longing to explore beyond the planet Earth, to “zenosyne,” the sense that time keeps getting faster. The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is for anyone who enjoys a shift in perspective, pondering the ineffable feelings that make up our lives. With a gorgeous package and beautiful illustrations throughout, this is the perfect gift for creatives, word nerds, and human beings everywhere.

    As such it has the difficult task of mediating between academic expertise and lived experience, attempting to reconcile opposed interests and perspectives. This clearly written introduction provides a concise but comprehensive overview of the most pressing and controversial issues surrounding contemporary language use today, including intercultural communication, political persuasion, new technologies, the growth of English, language in education, and foreign language teaching and learning.

    An exceptionally accessible book+audio (CD) course for beginning-level learners of Korean, helping them gain practical communication skills.

    If You Don't Have Kindle You Can Still Read This Book On Your Web Browser using Amazon Free Cloud Reader This book contains proven steps and strategies on how to communicate using the basics of the Spanish language. Divided into 10 chapters (one chapter per day), this book is designed to provide a step by step learning guide on Spanish grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. Plus, it features a series of useful common everyday expressions. This book is written in a conversational style that’s easy to follow and understand. After reading this book, you’ll never have to say “No hablo Español” ever again! Here Is A Preview Of What You'll Learn After Downloading Spanish For Beginners The Spanish Alphabet (El Alfabeto Español) Saludos y Expresiones (Greetings & Expressions) Basic Vocabulary Spanish Plurals Gender Capitalization Artículos (Articles) Pronombres (Pronouns) El Verbos (Verbs) Adjetivos españoles (Spanish Adjectives) Much, much more! Take Action Right Away and START your journey with Spanish! Download your copy today for just $2.99!

    He then fills it in with a tint of etymology and a smattering of quotes that show how the word is used, ending with a list of companion words. The words themselves range from commonplace — like biscuit, a twice-baked cake for Roman soldiers — to loanwords including chaparral, from the Basque shepherds who came to the American West; words from myths, such as hector; metamorphosis words, like silly, which evolved holy to goofy in a mere thousand years; and words well worthy of revival, such as carrytale, a wandering storyteller. Whether old-fangled or brand new, all the words included in The Painted Word possess an ineffable quality that makes them luminous.“A mytagogue, a carrytale and a thaumaturge, Cousineau makes us Argus-eyed to the ubuntu of the aprocryphal and Gemutlichkeit it provides, and if you don’t know what I’m talking about, then you definitely need this book.” -Lemony Snicket

    Now at last here's a feast for them and other verbivores. Eat up!-Barbara WallraffSenior Editor at The Atlantic Monthly and author of Word CourtPraise for A Word a Day"AWADies will be familiar with Anu Garg's refreshing approach to words: words are fun and they have fascinating histories. The people who use them have curious stories to tell too, and this collection incorporates some of the correspondence received by the editors at the AWAD site, from advice on how to outsmart your opponent in a duel (or even a truel) to a cluster of your favorite mondegreens."-John Simpson, Chief Editor, Oxford English Dictionary"A banquet of words! Feast and be nourished!"-Richard Lederer, author of The Miracle of LanguageWritten by the founder of the wildly popular A Word A Day Web site (www.wordsmith.org), this collection of unusual, obscure, and exotic English words will delight writers, scholars, crossword puzzlers, and word buffs of every ilk. The words are grouped in intriguing categories that range from "Portmanteaux" to "Words That Make the Spell-Checker Ineffective." each entry includes a concise definition, etymology, and usage example-and many feature fascinating and hilarious commentaries by A Word A Day subscribers and the authors.