Grammar (Resource Books for Teachers)Grammar, like death and taxes, is one of the few certainties in the life of a language teacher. It is the subject we love to hate. Many teachers feel uncomfortable with having to live with it, yet instinctively know they cannot live without it. For other teachers, grammar is the only secure point in the seeming chaos of communicative uncertainty, and they cling to it for safety. Whatever our feelings about grammar, it is clear that it is one (but only one) of the pillars which support a language. Without it, we are reduced to a kind of phrase-book pidgin. Yet the problem of just how to approach the teaching of grammar remains.
"Fiction imagines for us a stopping point from which life can be seen as intelligible,” asserts Joan Silber in The Art of Time in Fiction. The end point of a story determines its meaning, and one of the main tasks a writer faces is to define the duration of a plot. Silber uses wide-ranging examples from F. Scott Fitzgerald, Chinua Achebe, and Arundhati Roy, among others, to illustrate five key ways in which time unfolds in fiction. In clear-eyed prose, Silber elucidates a tricky but vital aspect of the art of fiction.
greenhouse in the garden for the more serious gardener can be a great benefit, both for the quality of the garden and the plants in it. This guide offers information on how to best use the space, which plants are most suited and how to encourage them, and how to control pests and diseases.
Vocabulary in a Second Language: Selection, Acquisition, and Testing (Converging Evidence in Language and Communication Research)
Most of the contributions that have been selected for this volume are papers that were presented at the Second-Language Vocabulary Acquisition Colloquium, which took place at Leiden University in March 2002, and which was organised under the auspices of the European Second Language Association (EUROSLA) by the editors of this book. This Colloquium was sponsored by the University of Haifa, the Universiteit Leiden Center for Linguistics (ULCL), the Leids Universiteits Fonds (LUF), and the Universiteit van Amsterdam.
