The easy way to learn the Japanese writing system! In this beginner's workbook, students of Japanese will learn to read and write the Hiragana and Katakana alphabets, as well as 50 basic Kanji characters. A step-by-step approach moves from tracing letters to reading and writing complete words quickly and effectively. This book gives you all the tools you need to learn to pronounce, read and write Japanese: A thorough overview of the hiragana and katakana alphabets. Audio recordings to improve your pronunciation and comprehension. A step-by-step approach to writing words and then sentences. Practice exercises featuring everyday activities and situations. An introduction to 50 key kanji characters. Free downloadable flash cards to aid memorization of the characters. Instead of dealing with separate Hiragana and Katakana workbooks, as is common, this comprehensive guide provides an efficient way to learn both with the help of one book.

Through life-changing stories, respected thinkers and authentic presentations, Keynote promotes a deeper understanding of the world and gives students the courage and means to express themselves in English. Communication, collaboration and creative thinking drive students towards real 21st century outcomes and encourage them to respond to ideas and find their own voice. Both students and teachers will emerge with new confidence, new ideas and a new determination to communicate in this increasingly information-rich world of Global English.

This volume contains a selection of the papers presented at the Conference on Historical News Discourse (Chined) that was held in Florence (Italy) on 2-3 September 2004. The aim of the Conference was to provide a forum for the presentation and discussion of recent research in the field of news discourse in early modern Britain. The first section of the volume focuses on news discourse in serial publications while the second part examines aspects of news language in non-serial works. Contributions include synchronic and diachronic analyses of reportage, polemic, propaganda, review journalism and advertisements in a wide range of texts including newsletters, pamphlets and newspapers. Each section is structured chronologically so that the reader can appreciate aspects of the general historical development of news discourse. The variety of topics and methodologies reflects some of the most interesting research being carried out in the field.

This book seeks to help teachers teach listening in a more principled way by presenting what is known from research, exploring teachers' beliefs and practices, examining textbook materials, and offering practical activities for improving second language listening.

This bibliography is a compilation of 15 short bibliographies published in an issue of the Journal of Second Language Writing from January 1993 to September 1997. The work focuses on theoretically grounded research reports and essays addressing issues in second and foreign language writing and writing instruction, containing 676 entries, each including a 50] word summary intended to be non-evaluative in nature. The editors hope that this work will be a useful tool for developing theory, research, and instruction in second language writing.

This book contains eight studies on Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG), with work by FDG's foremost proponents, who provide both an introduction to the theory and a glimpse of current research projects. FDG derives its name from taking the discourse act as the basic unit of linguistic analysis. Each such unit receives four paralle analyses displaying its interpersonal, representational, morphosyntactic and phonological characteristics respectively. What is striking about the emergence of FDG is that it enters into lively debate with various other contemporary frameworks that share its functionalist orientation. This facet of FDG is highlighted in this book, every chapter of which brings out the interconnectedness of current theoretical trends.

Gatewatching: Collaborative Online News Production is the first comprehensive study of the latest wave of online news publications. The book investigates the collaborative publishing models of key news Websites, ranging from the worldwide Indymedia network to the massively successful technology news site Slashdot, and further to the multitude of Weblogs that have emerged in recent years. Building on collaborative approaches borrowed from the open source software development community, this book illustrates how gatewatching provides an alternative to gatekeeping and other traditional journalistic models of reporting, and has enabled millions of users around the world to participate in the online news publishing process.

Ongoing interest in the turmoil of the 1960s clearly demonstrates how these social conflicts continue to affect contemporary politics. In The Bad Sixties: Hollywood Memories of the Counterculture, Antiwar, and Black Power Movements, Kristen Hoerl focuses on fictionalized portrayals of 1960s activism in popular television and film. Hoerl shows how Hollywood has perpetuated politics deploring the detrimental consequences of the 1960s on traditional American values. During the decade, people collectively raised fundamental questions about the limits of democracy under capitalism. But Hollywood has proved dismissive, if not adversarial, to the role of dissent in fostering progressive social change. Film and television are salient resources of shared understanding for audiences born after the 1960s because movies and television programs are the most accessible visual medium for observing the decade's social movements. Hoerl indicates that a variety of television programs, such as Family Ties, The Wonder Years, and Law and Order, along with Hollywood films, including Forrest Gump, have reinforced images of the ""bad sixties."" These stories portray a period in which urban riots, antiwar protests, sexual experimentation, drug abuse, and feminism led to national division and moral decay. According to Hoerl, these messages supply distorted civics lessons about what we should value and how we might legitimately participate in our democracy. These warped messages contribute to ""selective amnesia,"" a term that stresses how popular media renders radical ideas and political projects null or nonexistent. Selective amnesia removes the spectacular events and figures that define the late-1960s from their motives and context, flattening their meaning into reductive stereotypes. Despite popular television and film, Hoerl explains, memory of 1960s activism still offers a potent resource for imagining how we can strive collectively to achieve social justice and equality.

An important challenge to what currently masquerades as conventional wisdom regarding the teaching of writing. There seems to be widespread agreement that-when it comes to the writing skills of college students-we are in the midst of a crisis. In Why They Can't Write, John Warner, who taught writing at the college level for two decades, argues that the problem isn't caused by a lack of rigor, or smartphones, or some generational character defect. Instead, he asserts, we're teaching writing wrong. Warner blames this on decades of educational reform rooted in standardization, assessments, and accountability. We have done no more, Warner argues, than conditioned students to perform "writing-related simulations," which pass temporary muster but do little to help students develop their writing abilities. This style of teaching has made students passive and disengaged. Worse yet, it hasn't prepared them for writing in the college classroom. Rather than making choices and thinking critically, as writers must, undergraduates simply follow the rules-such as the five-paragraph essay-designed to help them pass these high-stakes assessments. In Why They Can't Write, Warner has crafted both a diagnosis for what ails us and a blueprint for fixing a broken system. Combining current knowledge of what works in teaching and learning with the most enduring philosophies of classical education, this book challenges readers to develop the skills, attitudes, knowledge, and habits of mind of strong writers.

Exam Essentials Practice Tests provide students with an invaluable combination of exam information, task guidance and up-to-date exam practice. This revised edition provides updated tests along with two completely new tests written by experts in the field and are at least the same level as the real Cambridge English exam. Students can be confident that if they do well in the Practice Tests, they'll do well in the real exam

If you are like many people, including the author at one time, your fear of public speaking may be holding you back and limiting your influence and potential. This book is designed to help you confront and conquer your fear of public speaking. Each of the twenty lessons builds upon the other and guides you through a systematic process to freedom. Public speaking is a skill that is important and valuable for many obvious reasons. Ralph Waldo Emerson declares rightfully, "Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel." Being a good communicator can enhance your chances to be a leader, to influence an audience, or perhaps to land a business deal or new job opportunity. Sooner or later, you will be asked or even forced to speak in a public setting. Though this thought is exhilarating to some, it also terrifies a great number of others. Sadly, fear of public speaking silences scores of voices, causing many to lose out on a variety of opportunities. Indeed, being a competent public speaker may enhance your career, business influence, and potential for success. Whether your fear of public speaking is slight or severe this book will help to face it down and defeat it, once and for all. You will also find a variety of tools and tips to help you improve your ability to speak in front of others. There really is a way to overcome your fear of speaking in public. By purchasing this course and looking for ways to apply it, you have taken an important first step. However, in order to deal with the fears that bind you, you will need to commit to doing some hard work. But, let me assure you that if you read the lessons carefully and do the exercises suggested herein, you will notice a marked difference in yourself by the end of this course. The only way you will conquer the fear of public speaking is confronting it head on. That is exactly what "Overcoming the Fear of Public Speaking" will help you do.

HOW TO WRITE YOUR MEMOIRS A WORKBOOK AND GUIDE by JOHNNY RAY Award Winning Novelist And Professional Memoir Ghostwriter Do you have a legacy that needs to be preserved? Would you like to see your life told in the form of a novel? Or made into a movie? Making you both rich and Famous What words of wisdom do you want to leave for your family? Would you like to have your life's work validated? Or the record set straight? In Reality When will you write your memoirs? Tomorrow, or the next or . . . Written by master storyteller JOHNNY RAY this guide and workbook will lead you through the process of telling the story that must be told and can only be told by you. A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF WHAT YOU WILL RECEIVE 1) An introduction to what is a memoir 2) How to get started 3) How to recall the memories that make up the pages of your life 4) Determining the main turning points in your life 5) How to stay focused on the main story 6) Deciding which characters to include or exclude 7) Doing research and fact checking 8) Determining the author's voice and point of view 9) Determining if the book should be factual or fiction 10) Determining the driving purpose behind writing the memoir 11) Determining who the intended reader is 12) Determining how open the author wishes to be 13) Showing versus telling 14) How to polish the memoir 15) How to find an agent or publisher 16) Other methods of getting published 17) How to hire a ghostwriter 18) A list of questions a ghostwriter will usually ask This guide and workbook will lead you through the steps to create your own memoir. A ghostwriter can cost you as much as $500 for even a short story type memoir to over $100,000 for a full length memoir. The consulting fee alone can run to as much as $500 per hour. This guide will save you money as it shows you how to develop and write your own memoir. if you decide you do need to hire a ghostwriter later the instructions enclosed in the guide and workbook should decrease the cost of hiring a ghostwriter by lowering the amount of time the ghostwriter has to spend in developing the story, saving you thousands of dollars.

Normative texts are meant to be highly impersonal and decontextualised, yet at the same time they also deal with a range of human behaviour that is difficult to predict, which means they have to have a very high degree of determinacy on the one hand, and all-inclusiveness on the other. This poses a dilemma for the writer and interpreter of normative texts. The author of such texts must be determinate and vague at the same time, depending upon to what extent he or she can predict every conceivable contingency that may arise in the application of what he or she writes. The papers in this volume discuss important legal and linguistic aspects relating to the use of vagueness in legal drafting and demonstrate why such aspects are critical to our understanding of the way normative texts function.

One of the most civilized nations in history, China has a long-standing writing tradition and many Chinese texts have become world treasures. However, the way the Chinese teach writing in various countries in contemporary times is little known to the outside world, especially in Western countries. Undoubtedly, the Chinese have had an established traditional method of writing instruction. However, recent social and political developments have created the perception amongst both practitioners and researchers of a need for change. Whilst certain socio-political changes, both in Mainland China and in the territories, acted as agents for reform of the teaching of composition, the shape these reforms are taking has been due to many different influences, coming both from inside the countries themselves and from foreign sources. Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore have each developed their own approach to the teaching of composition.

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This book examines the concept of authentic English in today's world, where cultures are in constant interaction and the English language works as a binding agent for many cross-cultural exchanges. It offers a comprehensive review of decades of debate around authenticity in language teaching and learning and attempts to synthesise the complexities by presenting them as a continuum. This continuum builds on the work of eminent scholars and combines them within a flexible framework that celebrates the process of interaction whilst acknowledging the complexity and individual subjectivity of authenticity. Authenticity is approached as a complex dynamic construct that can only be understood by examining it from social, individual and contextual dimensions, in relation to actual people. Authenticity is a problem not just for language acquisition but one which affects us as individuals belonging to society.

This book provides rare insights into motivation among extremely successful learners of English and languages other than English (LOTEs) through the analysis of a longitudinal study and the examination of the factors involved in becoming multilingual in a non-multilingual environment. Based on sixteen interview sessions, conducted over the course of nine years while the learners progressed from high school to the world of work, this book offers the story of how two learners persist in English/LOTE learning. The study illuminates the long-term processes through which the interviewees develop ideal English/LOTE selves in an environment where multilingualism is not emphasized and where both English and LOTEs can still be described as foreign languages. Educators and researchers will learn from this study, which stretches our understanding of motivation beyond the recent theorizing of L2 motivation and contributes to the limited research in long-term motivational trajectories and LOTE learning motivation, which is particularly scarce in non-European contexts. The book will be of interest not only to readers in Japan but also to those in other contexts as it offers an example of successful learners who go beyond the pragmatic and instrumentalist view of language learning to hold a more holistic view, thus revealing the factors which can sustain multiple language learning, even in foreign language contexts.

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