Does university seem like another planet? Does everyone else seem to speak another language? What can you do to make the grade?
If these are the kind of questions you are asking, then this is the book you need. After the excitement of being accepted, the reality of life at university or college can be daunting, but help is at hand.
The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality (2005) is the second book on theoretical physics, cosmology and string theory written by Brian Greene, professor and co-director of Columbia's Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics.
If Albert Einstein were alive, he would have a copy of The Road to Reality on his bookshelf. So would Isaac Newton. This may be the most complete mathematical explanation of the universe yet published, and Roger Penrose richly deserves the accolades he will receive for it.
Adding a new introduction and two previously unpublished papers, Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis brings together van Leeuwen's methodological work on discourse analysis of the last 15 years. Discourse, van Leeuwen argues, is a resource for representation, a knowledge about some aspect of reality which can be drawn upon when that aspect of reality has to be represented, a framework for making sense of things. And they are plural. There can be different discourses, different ways of making sense of the same aspect of reality that serve different interests and will therefore be used in different social contexts.
Linguists, applied linguists and language teachers all appeal to the native speaker as an important reference point. But what exactly (who exactly?) is the native speaker? This book examines the native speaker from different points of view, arguing that the native speaker is both myth and reality. (Bilingual Education and Bilingualism , 38)
