Nearly half a century has passed since Hymes proposed the concept of communicative competence to describe the knowledge and skills required for the appropriate use of language in a social context. During these decades, a number of scholars have applied and refined this concept. In language education, communicative competence has been identified as a major objective of learning. This book will inform readers about communicative competence as a highly complex construct encompassing an array of sub-competencies such as linguistic skills and proficiencies, knowledge of socio-cultural and socio-pragmatic codes, and the ability to engage in textual and conversational discourse. Findings from research in related disciplines have pointed to the significance of factors that can contribute to the attainment of communicative competence. Various teaching practices and relevant Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools will be also introduced and discussed to achieve communicative competence as a complex ability. It is a timely contribution to current research on key areas in the teaching, learning and acquisition of second/foreign languages.

English: An Essential Grammar is written specifically for native speakers, beginning with the basics and going on to deal with phrase, clause and sentence structure, word formation and spelling. This fully revised third edition features new material on: the structure of phrases and clauses light verbs nominal adjectives the Operator preposition to and infinitival to the four thats determiners, prepositions, and common errors With new exercises and answers for all new sections, this Essential Grammar continues to be the ideal reference for anyone who would like to improve their knowledge of English grammar.

Drawing on vast amounts of new data from live, unscripted radio and TV broadcasts, and the internet, this is a brilliant and original analysis of colloquial English, revealing unusual and largely unreported types of clause structure. Andrew Radford debunks the myth that colloquial English has a substandard, simplified grammar, and shows that it has a coherent and complex structure of its own. The book develops a theoretically sophisticated account of structure and variation in colloquial English, advancing an area that has been previously investigated from other perspectives, such as corpus linguistics or conversational analysis, but never before in such detail from a formal syntactic viewpoint.

A handy cheat sheet of key Japanese grammar in a at-a-glance, easy-to-carry format! The Japanese Grammar Language Study Card is the perfect resource for reviewing the main grammar that frequently appears in the N5 or N4 Level Japanese Language Proficiency Exam or the AP Exam. The compact, portable format is invaluable for anyone wanting to quickly review or expand their knowledge of everyday Japanese sentence and verb forms. This study card includes: Overview of basic sentence structure Key verb forms including plain and polite forms How to use sentence particles correctly How to make questions How to use pronouns The grammar points are clearly organized into color-coded sections. Each section has a concise explanation in English followed by examples given in Japanese script and romanized Japanese with English translation. Free online audio recordings by native speakers provide clear and accurate pronunciations for all the Japanese words and sentences, and Hiragana and Katakana alphabet charts are also included! Designed for convenience, this study card is: Laminated: to hold up over time and avoid being ruined by coffee spills 3 hole punched: giving the option to put it in a binder 8.5x11 inches: to easily fit into a folder or notebook alongside other study materials

The go-to guide for perfecting your grammar and communication skills in every situation English teachers aren't the only ones who expect careful and correct language choices. Precision in language can be the deciding factor when it comes to getting a job or winning a promotion. Whether your skills need drastic improvement or a quick brush-up, The McGraw-Hill Handbook of English Grammar and Usage will get your grammar back on the right track. Written by two expert grammarians, the book provides bottom-line definitions, tips, and simple rules that summarize the essentials you need to know. You'll find clear examples of usage and as well guidance on communication via text, email, and social media. The new, third edition of The McGraw-Hill Handbook of English Grammar and Usage features: *Straightforward explanations of common mistakes and why they happen*Hundreds of correct and incorrect sentence examples, with errors clearly marked*Quick tips for fixing your most stubborn grammatical mishaps*Catchy memory aids for writing correctly the first time, and more

This is a new, thoroughly revised edition of the acclaimed Using French. It provides guidance for those who have already acquired the basics of French and wish to extend their knowledge of the language. Unlike conventional grammars, it gives special attention to those areas of the vocabulary and grammatical usage of contemporary French that cause most difficulty to English-speakers, and incorporates the concept of register differences throughout. Clearly laid out and easy to consult, it will prove invaluable to all who wish to improve their fluency and confidence in French.

Sunday Times bestselling author Caroline Taggart brings her usual gently humorous approach to punctuation, pointing out what really matters and what doesn't. In Roman times, blocks of text were commonly written just as blocks without even wordspacingnevermindpunctuation to help the reader to interpret them. Orators using such texts as notes for a speech would prepare carefully so that they were familiar with the content and didn't come a cropper over a confusion between, say, therapists and the rapists. As we entered the Christian era and sacred texts were widely read (by priests if not by the rest of us), it became ever more important to remove any likelihood of misinterpretation. To a potential murderer or adulterer, for example, there is a world of difference between 'If you are tempted, yield not, resisting the urge to commit a sin' and 'If you are tempted, yield, not resisting the urge to commit a sin'. And the only surface difference is the positioning of a comma. So yes, you SMS-addicts and 'let it all hang out' Sixties children, punctuation does matter. And, contrary to what people who tear their hair out over apostrophes believe, it is there to help - to clarify meaning, to convey emphasis, to indicate that you are asking a question or quoting someone else's words. It also comes in handy for telling your reader when to pause for breath. Caroline Taggart, who has made a name for herself expounding on the subjects of grammar, usage and words generally (and who for decades made her living putting in the commas in other people's work), takes her usual gently humorous approach to punctuation. She points out what matters and what doesn't; why using six exclamation marks where one will do is perfectly OK in a text but will lose you marks at school; why hang glider pilots in training really need a hyphen; and how throwing in the odd semicolon will impress your friends. Sometimes opinionated but never dogmatic, she is an ideal guide to the (perceived) minefield that is punctuation. By the same author: 9781843176572 My Grammar and I (Or Should That Be 'Me'?) 9781782432944 500 Words you Should Know

This volume examines the nature and significance of the reflexive aspect of natural language, its capacity to represent its own structure and use through reported speech and explicit statements about language-use (metapragmatics). It adopts a truly interdisciplinary approach. Part I contains papers outlining the volume's theoretical scope. Parts II and III contain anthropological case studies which show the formal devices behind reflexive usage in a variety of different languages and how they function in cultural life. Finally, Part IV shows the importance of understanding reflexive language in many other areas of the humanities and social sciences, including philosophy, psychology, religious studies, sociology and literary studies. Many of the contributors are senior scholars of international reputation: all are innovative researchers. Cumulatively their work here represents a critique of those researchers in the humanities and social sciences who fail to take language seriously both in the lives of those they study and in their own research practices.

Grammatical Complexity in Academic English uses corpus-based analyses to challenge a number of dominant stereotypes and assumptions within linguistics. Biber and Gray tackle the nature of grammatical complexity, demonstrating that embedded phrasal structures are as important as embedded dependent clauses. The authors also overturn ingrained assumptions about linguistic change, showing that grammatical change occurs in writing as well as speech. This work establishes that academic writing is structurally compressed (rather than elaborated); that it is often not explicit in the expression of meaning; and that scientific academic writing has been the locus of some of the most important grammatical changes in English over the past 200 years (rather than being conservative and resistant to change). Supported throughout with textual evidence, this work is essential reading for discourse analysts, sociolinguists, and applied linguists, as well as descriptive linguists and historical linguists.

Drawing on vast amounts of new data from live, unscripted radio and TV broadcasts, and the internet, this is a brilliant and original analysis of colloquial English, revealing unusual and largely unreported types of clause structure. Andrew Radford debunks the myth that colloquial English has a substandard, simplified grammar, and shows that it has a coherent and complex structure of its own. The book develops a theoretically sophisticated account of structure and variation in colloquial English, advancing an area that has been previously investigated from other perspectives, such as corpus linguistics or conversational analysis, but never before in such detail from a formal syntactic viewpoint.

Anyone writing texts in English is constantly faced with the unavoidable question whether to use open spelling (drinking fountain), hyphenation (far-off) or solid spelling (airport) for individual compounds. While some compounds commonly occur with alternative spellings, others show a very clear bias for one form. This book tests over 60 hypotheses and explores the patterns underlying the spelling of English compounds from a variety of perspectives. Based on a sample of 600 biconstituent compounds with identical spelling in all reference works in which they occur (200 each with open, hyphenated and solid spelling), this empirical study analyses large amounts of data from corpora and dictionaries and concludes that the spelling of English compounds is not chaotic but actually correlates with a large number of statistically significant variables. An easily applicable decision tree is derived from the data and an innovative multi-dimensional prototype model is suggested to account for the results.

In this sparkling debut work of popular science, Emma Byrne examines the latest research to show how swearing can be good for you. She explores every angle of swearing-why we do it, how we do it, and what it tells us about ourselves. Packed with the results of unlikely and often hilarious scientific studies-from the "ice-bucket test" for coping with pain, to the connection between Tourette's and swearing, to a chimpanzee that curses at her handler in sign language-Swearing Is Good for You presents a lighthearted but convincing case for the foulmouthed.

'Wonderful. You finish the book more alive than ever to the enduring mystery and miracle of that thing that makes us most human' STEPHEN FRY 'Most popular books on language dumb down; Shariatmadari's smartens things up, and is all the more entertaining for it' THE SUNDAY TIMES, a Book of the Year 'A meaty, rewarding and necessary read' GUARDIAN 'Fascinating and thought-provoking . . . crammed with weird and wonderful facts . . . for anyone who delights in linguistics it's a richly rewarding read' MAIL ON SUNDAY - A word's origin doesn't tell you what it means today - There are languages that change when your mother-in-law is present - The language you speak could make you more prone to accidents - There's a special part of the brain that produces swear words Taking us on a mind-boggling journey through the science of language, linguist David Shariatmadari uncovers the truth about what we do with words, exploding nine widely-held myths about language while introducing us to some of the fundamental insights of modern linguistics.

Originally published in 1906, this textbook's principal aim is to give 'the facts of the language as they appear in the accepted models of Classical Latin'. Predominantly written for school students, this highly informative book sets out to educate the grammar of this classical language - the term 'classical' here meant as the 'artificial literacy dialect of which Cicero and Caesar are the recognised exponents in prose, Vergil, Ovid and Horace in poetry'. Chapters are detailed and broad in scope; chapter titles include, 'Phonology', 'Accidence' and 'Prosody'. Notably, 'Accidence and syntax are treated separately, yet, where it seemed convenient, e.g. with the impersonal verbs, the construction of certain words has been given at the same time as their forms and inflexions'. An index of verbs is included for reference. Intended as a reliable and clear introduction, this book will be of great value to anyone with an interest in Latin.

A Reference Grammar of Chinese is a comprehensive and up-to-date guide to the linguistic structure of Chinese, covering all of the important linguistic features of the language and incorporating insights gained from research in Chinese linguistics over the past thirty years. With contributions from twenty-two leading Chinese linguists, this authoritative guide uses large-scale corpora to provide authentic examples based on actual language use. The accompanying online example databases ensure that a wide range of exemplars are readily available and also allow for new usages to be updated. This design offers a new paradigm for a reference grammar where generalizations can be cross-checked with additional examples and also provide resources for both linguistic studies and language learning. Featuring bilingual term lists, this reference grammar helps readers to access relevant literature in both English and Chinese and is an invaluable reference for learners, teachers and researchers in Chinese linguistics and language processing.

This book makes punctuation more fun and easier to learn than traditional approaches do. It teaches the natural way, by example: each lesson begins with quotes that exemplify good punctuation and sentence structure. Quotations are humorous and informative, drawn from the words of notable figures-Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Jerry Seinfeld, Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Jennifer Lawrence, and many others. Short essays accompany each lesson, showing how each punctuation mark originated and how its use has altered over time. Correct punctuation is vital for clear, accurate, and natural writing. Anyone preparing a course assignment, applying for a job or for college admission, or doing any other formal writing needs to know the standard conventions of punctuation. Yet many people have never been taught how to punctuate. A necessary addition to any writer's bookshelf, this enjoyable book will teach readers to punctuate effectively and confidently-through over 500 memorable quotes and clear explanations of the rules.

This volume explores both historical and current issues in English usage guides or style manuals. Guides of this sort have a long history: while Fowler's Modern English Usage (1926) is one of the best known, the first English usage guide was published in the UK in 1770, and the first in the US in 1847. Today, new titles come out nearly every year, while older works are revised and reissued. Remarkably, however, the kind of usage problems that have been addressed over the years are very much the same, and attitudes towards them are slow to change - but they do change. The chapters in this book look at how and why these guides are compiled, and by whom; what sort of advice they contain; how they differ from grammars and dictionaries; how attitudes to usage change; and why institutions such as the BBC need their own style guide. The volume will appeal not only to researchers and students in sociolinguistics, but also to general readers with an interest in questions of usage and prescriptivism, language professionals such as teachers and editors, and language policy makers.

This is a collection of research papers on competition in English affixation. It combines methodological chapters with descriptive chapters and incorporates both contributions by renowned international authors and also by younger researchers. The book presents diachronic and synchronic research both onomasiological and semasiological. The first three chapters review the literature and provide the theoretical framework for the experimental description of the remaining chapters.