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"I don't want nothing, except a book without scary Latin phrases on how to speak English better..."

Shape up Your English - Speak and write more fluent English and avoid common mistakes

 

by Betty Kirkpatrick, edited by Eleanor Abraham

 

Paperback. 234 x 165mm 384 pages. Contains humorous cartoons to make you laugh with no-fear English, and two colour text. RRP £12.99

 

Shape Up Your English is a fun, easy-to-understand book that helps you improve your English. It shows examples of conversations in the office, with neighbours, acquaintances and contacts and shows common errors and how to avoid them. It also shows you how to write an essay, how to construct good sentences and paragraphs and will help you to develop confidence.

The book explains grammar in an easy way, and is not full of scary Latin terms. The book also demonstrates how to begin and end chats with people in a polite way. And how to avoid pitfalls, and offending people when you don't mean to. We added in cartoons and colour in the text to try to make the book more friendly and make you laugh.

If you are looking for a book to help you practice and understand how to sound more natural when you speak English, Shape Up Your English will help.

In order to communicate with a wide range of people in a wide range of situations in a fluent and natural way, we need a good grasp of English grammar, with a sound knowledge of spoken English and its pronunciation.

Cat got your tongue? English is full of what we call 'idioms' - phrases where the actual meaning of the phrase is different to the obvious meaning of the words it is made up of. And it is important to be able to use the phrases fluently to speak well in English.

We recommend you study this book in bite size chunks of 15 minutes a day.

This book will help you to avoid making common mistakes in English. With the help of sample conversations, you can see examples of idiomatic English and how to chat to people, and to open and close conversations in a polite way.

The information is presented in small chunks so it does not look scary on the page. The book has very clear layout and explains differences and how to practice English. It is a good reference book for learners.

The book has clear headings, a large type size and sub-headings. Key information is contained in boxes so you can go at a slow or quick pace.

Rules of grammar are shown in a friendly way, and there are some cartoons and jokes. This book will help anyone trying to improve their conversational English. It is a good guide to use when using other learning English books also.

CHAPTERS INCLUDE:

EXPANDING YOUR SKILLS: Practice Spoken English; Listening skills; Grammar and usage Idioms; Punctuation; Writing and reading English

SPOKEN ENGLISH: Turn-taking; Non-verbal communication; Telephone conversations: Beginnings and endings Vocabulary

PRONUNCIATION: IPA Syllables and stresses; Vowels; Consonants; Sounds particular to English; Silent letters;

IDIOMS: Origins, Common idioms, Proverbs

CLICHES: A bit of colour - Cliches from idioms; Cliches from over-used phrases; Archaic cliches; Cliches as 'fillers'

EVERYDAY EXPRESSIONS: Interjections

SENTENCES: Minor sentences; Simple sentences; Compound sentences; Complex sentences; Types of sentence: statements; Answers; Clauses; Phrases

NOUNS AND PRONOUNS: Uncountable nouns; Plural forms of noun; Pronouns; Personal pronouns and sexist language

ADJECTIVES: Gradable and non-gradable adjectives; Position; Predicative; adjectives ; Colour adjectives; Emphatic adjectives; Interrogative adjectives ; Compound adjectives; Adjectives used as nouns; Adjective or adverb? Comparative forms of adjectives; Superlative forms

DETERMINERS: Referring and quantifying; Definite and indefinite articles ; Demonstrative determiners; Possessive determiners; Indefinite determiners; Number determiners; Determiners and nouns

ADVERBS: Modifying Types of adverb; Gradable and non-gradable

CONJUNCTIONS: Coordinating conjunctions; Subordinating conjunctions

VERBS: 'Doing' and 'being' words; Infinitive Tenses; Participles ; Gerund: Mood, Voice , Auxiliary verbs, Modal auxiliary verbs, Regular verbs, Irregular verbs , Verb agreement, Irregular verb list

PHRASAL VERBS: What's the problem? Position of the object Figurative or literal meaning? Complex phrasal verbs PREPOSITIONS: Simple prepositions; Complex prepositions; Common errors; Word pairs

CONFUSABLE WORDS: Problems, Homophones, Homographs, Homonyms, Which word?

PUNCTUATING PROPERLY: Preserving meaning; Apostrophe; Brackets; Capital letters; Colon; Semicolon; Comma; Dash; Exclamation mark Full stop Hyphen Question mark Quotation marks Three-dot ellipsis

WRITING :Plain English; Editing your Writing: a non-fiction composition; essays; letters, emails and texting

READING COMPREHENSION: Approaching a reading interpretation; What kind of questions? Preparing for a book report A writer's style; What are the themes involved? Narrative; Close reading; Literary terms

MAKING A SPEECH: Your audience; Mind map it; The speech; Making the speech;

INDEX

About us:

Our company has been publishing books on English grammar , and how to write and speak English well, since 1988. We are based in Scotland and our team worked at Collins, Chambers, Macmillan and Bloomsbury.