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

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 and two colour text. RRP £12.99

Shape Up Your English is a practical book to help you understand written and spoken English. It will help you to avoid common mistakes. With the help of sample conversations, you can see examples of idiomatic English.

With information presented in small chunks, this book presents helpful information. It is a very good reference book for learners.

Clear headings, a large type size and sub-headings, plus boxes of key information, are used throughout. The book presents the rules of grammar in an easier way than many more formal books. 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.

In order to communicate with a wide range of people in a wide range of situations in a fluent and natural way, students need a good grasp of English grammar, with a sound knowledge of spoken English and its pronunciation. Students also need a familiarity with English idioms. Idioms are 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.

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

ISBN: 9781910965382