Product Description
This book outlines pragmatics, the study of how people make sense of each other linguistically. Basic concepts such as the cooperative principle, deixis, and speech acts are explained and illustrated, providing readers with an ideal foundation for further study. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Best Introduction to Pragmatics
This book is all you could ask for in terms of an easy introduction to pragmatics. It is concise, simple, well-planned, clear, and full of useful examples.

Slightly over a hundred pages, this is an ideal read if you're looking for basic knowledge on pragmatics in general. I know no better book for that.

Highly recommended. In addition, this was the reference book in one my classes on pragmatics, so if university teachers consider it good enough for their classes, you can consider it good enough for yourself. And good enough, it sure is.

Short and Swift
George Yule's "Pragmatics" is a great little introduction on the topic of English pragmatics, but that is all it is. It is a brief insight into some of the key concepts of the field and one that I found very useful. For this reason, I would recommend it.

However, it is a very short book, and those with more experience, (or any experience at all, for that matter), would probably prefer something more substantial. It is really a whirlwind tour of pragmatics and nothing more.

That said, I found it very readable and easily understood. It was certainly not all that taxing on the reading skills, and the main concepts and definitions were well explained.

This is a good book to start with, and I recommend it for a launching point to further reading.

An Introduction to an... Introduction
The series in which appeared this book is designed to give a large-scale view of different areas of language. It should be used as an introduction to more specific ... introductions. The titles in the series are all divided into four sections: Survey, Readings, References and Glossary.

The Survey of Pragmatics contains nine chapters, each of roughly 10 pages: 1) Definitions and background; 2) Deixis and Reference; 3) Reference and inference; 4) Presupposition and entailment; 5)Cooperation and implicature; 6) Speech acts and events; 7)Politeness and interaction; 8) Conversation and preference structure; 9) Discourse and culture.

The Readings are one-page texts extracted from the specialized literature and are followed by a couple of questions. The References help the reader providing him with a selection of titles for every chapter of the Survey. The proposed books are classified in terms of difficulty, from introductory to advanced level. Technical terms are in bold and are explained once more in the Glossary at the back of the book.

I think the author has succeeded in giving a bird's view of several fields of pragmatics. Of course, the discussion is somewhat condensed and could, at least at some points, be clearer or give some more details. But one should be aware of the difficulty of explaining a lot of stuff to people with no assumed prior knowledge of the subject and having only 90 pages at one's disposal! Nonetheless, I missed formal definitions of technical terms in the Survey. The author often gives them only indirectly, and the reader must extract them himself from the text. Sincerely, I did not find the Readings useful at all and I would have wished to find more titles and more details in the comments under each of them in the References. ... Read more

Product Description
This book is designed to help teachers understand English grammar and explain it to their students. Each chapter focuses on a problematic area and offers exercises for students as well as teaching ideas. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

clear explanation of complex grammar
After taking a few linguistics classes, I was getting somewhat tired of British authors of linguistics or advanced grammar books. Too many examples that do not apply to spoken culture in the states. However, this one is much better than the usual. It offers common sense explanations of complex English grammar, sticking to non-cultural specifics so that all the examples apply fully to either side of the pond. I am not a linguist, so the last half of this book gets hard for me to follow sometimes. In spite of that, I highly recommend this book for anyone who either finds advanced grammar hard to grasp, or those who have studied it longer and want to read some clear explanations of the underlying reasons for the established grammar of today. These concepts cannot be explained very simply, but Yule sure gives it a try while being thorough at the same time. This is a wonderful grammar book for college level grammar classes, and for future teachers.

Connects language functions to grammar
This book is great. It does a lot to bridge the gap between teaching grammar and pragmatics (or language functions).

It goes beyond the decontextualized grammar that most grammar books provide and describes howthe peculiarities and idiosyncracies ofnine difficult areas of Englishgrammar can beexplained to students. The areas include articles, tenseand aspect, modals, conditionals,prepositions and particles, indirectobjects,infinitives and gerunds, relative clauses,and direct andindirect speech. The "Teaching Ideas" section at the end of eachchapter connects grammar up with classroom activities, both the usualgrammar worksheet type of activity and the interactive-communicativetype.

It would have been nice if the book provided more ways to connectspecific types of communicative activities with specific points of grammar,but I've been able to use this book to understand how the communicativeactivities I use regularly contain implicit grammar practice.

JonFernquest ferni@loxinfo.co.th bayinnaung@hotmail.com ... Read more

Product Description
This best-selling textbook provides an engaging and user-friendly introduction to the study of language. Assuming no prior knowledge in the subject, Yule presents information in short, bite-sized sections, introducing the major concepts in language study - from how children learn language to why men and women speak differently, through all the key elements of language. This fourth edition has been revised and updated with twenty new sections, covering new accounts of language origins, the key properties of language, text messaging, kinship terms and more than twenty new word etymologies. To increase student engagement with the text, Yule has also included more than fifty new tasks, including thirty involving data analysis, enabling students to apply what they have learned. The online study guide offers students further resources when working on the tasks, while encouraging lively and proactive learning. This is the most fundamental and easy-to-use introduction to the study of language. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (19)

Fun, enticing reading
I very much enjoyed this book, as introductory material for language training.
I definitely see it being used in classrooms, as it brings many exercises and topics for discussion.

Good
Book came with the first chapter highlighted but other than that was in perfect condition.

I wouldn't know because I never received it
I only gave this 2 stars because I never received it. I complained to the buyer, AllNewBooks, that my shipment was greatly delayed and that I was disappointed. In response, they refunded the money I paid WITHOUT MY PERMISSION, and requested the book back once I received it. AllNewBooks sent the book from New Jersey and I'm in Virginia (a couple of states south of NJ) and the book is still not here...today is June 12 and I ordered the book on May 10. Over 1 month and still not here.

Regardless, I never got to enjoy the book and I'm barely passing my college course without the book. The semester is almost over so I suppose I'll continue on without it.

Very disappointed with the seller and with 84% positive feedback...that's still a 16% NEGATIVE feedback rating that Amazon should consider. The seller might need to be removed from Amazon and unable to sell under their current name, address, phone number, etc.

Great Book. Fast Shipping
This book is great. Very informative and helpful. Very good quality when shipped. Shipping was fast. Great overall.

Great book
I feel that this a great book. One thing thats great is that the chapters are short enough to get through, especially for those that use the book for college. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
This book provides ideas, techniques, and procedures that will enable the practicing language teacher to better identify the local needs of particular groups of second language learners, and work toward meeting those needs.It includes numerous illustrative examples and practical exercises that can be adapted and use in the classroom. ... Read more

Product Description
A través de un estilo claro y conciso, George Yule ofrece al lector no especializado una introducción exhaustiva a los aspectos fundamentales del estudio de la lengua. Desde los orígenes del lenguaje hasta el análisis de las estratgias de adquisición/aprendizaje de una primera o segunda lengua; desde los procesos de formación de las palabras, la gramática y la sintaxis hasta los factores sociales, culturales y geográficos que influyen en el desarrollo de la lengua, este manual proporciona la oportunidad de descubrir el funcionamiento del lenguaje y el papel que desempeña dentro de las relaciones humanas. ... Read more

Product Description
The book has no illustrations or index. It may have numerous typos or missing text. However, purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original rare book from the publisher's website (GeneralBooksClub.com). You can also preview excerpts of the book there. Purchasers are also entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Original Publisher: Saint Louis, Printed for the author; Publication date: 1886; Subjects: Mnemonics; ... Read more

Product Description
Referential communication is the term given to communicative acts, generally spoken, in which some kind of information is exchanged between one speaker and another. This information exchange is typically dependent on successful acts of reference, whereby entities (human and non-human) are identified (by naming or describing), are located or moved relative to other entities (by giving instructions or directions), or are followed through sequences of locations and events (by recounting an incident or a narrative). These "activities" are examples of events that are more typically described as "tasks" in the area of second language studies. These might be real world tasks encountered in everyday experience or pedagogical tasks specifically designed for second language classroom use.

This volume comprehensively documents and describes the veritable explosion of task-based research in language acquisition. In a succinct, yet easily accessible fashion, it presents the origins, principles, and key distinctions of referential communication research in first and second language studies, complete with exhaustive analyses and illustrations of different types of materials. The author also describes and evaluates different choices for using or modifying these materials, provides analytic frameworks for focusing on various aspects of the data elicited by these tasks, and includes an extensive bibliography plus an appendix showing original task materials.
... Read more

Product Description
Discourse analysis is a term which has come to have different interpretations for scholars working in different disciplines. For a sociolinguist, it is concerned mainly with the structre of social interaction manifested in conversation; for a psycholinguist, it is primarily concerned with the nature of comprehension of short written texts; for the computational linguist, it is concerned with producing operational models of text-understanding within highly limited contexts. In this textbook, the authors provide an extensive overview of the many and diverse approaches to the study of discourse, but base their own approach centrally on the discipline which, to varying degrees, is common to them all - linguistics. Using a methodology which has much in common with descriptive linguistics, they offer a lucid and wide-ranging account of how forms of language are used in communication. Their principal concern is to examine how any language produced by man, whether spoken or written, is used to communicate for a purpose in a context. The discussion is carefully illustrated throughout by a wide variety of discourse types (conversations recorded in different social situations, extracts from newspapers, notices, contemporary fiction, graffiti, etc.). The techniques of analysis are described and exemplified in sufficient detail for the student to be able to apply them to any language in context that he or she encounters. A familiarity with elementary linguistics is assumed, but the range of issues discussed in conjunction with the variety of exemplification presented will make this a valuable and stimulating textbook not only for students of linguistics, but for any reader who wishes to investigate the principles underlying the use of language in natural contexts to communicate and understand intended meaning. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Well done work
This review pertains to the 2004 reprint edition.Aside from the lousy type in the book (an old mimeograph machine could have made clearer print than whoever reprinted this edition), the content is excellent.Though originally copyrighted in 1983, the content is still relevant.The portrayal of DA is balanced, taking into account a wide array of research.The authors have done their readers a service in several ways: (1) the book is a good resource of DA terminology and concepts; (2) they look at the research critically, presenting pros and cons, and where appropriate, provide their own alternative theories; (3) they write in a manner that is surprisingly engaging and fairly easy to follow; (4) the data from which they glean examples are from real world discourse (if contrived, they tell the reader); (5) they provide a solid bibliography for anyone doing work in DA.I recommend this book. ... Read more

Product Description
This book is about teaching the spoken language. It presents in a highly accessible form the results of the author's important research on teaching and assessing effective spoken communication. The authors examine the nature of spoken language and how it differs from written language both in form and purpose. A large part of the book is concerned with principles and techniques for teaching spoken production and listening comprehension. An important chapter deals with how to assess spoken language. The principles and techniques described apply to the teaching of English as a foreign and second language, and are also highly relevant to the teaching of the mother tongue. The accompanying cassette contains extracts from original source recordings which are transcribed as examples in the book. ... Read more

Product Description
A three-level English grammar practice series for the classroom or self-study with clear explanations and lots of extra practice. Each level has an interactive Practice-Boost CD-ROM. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Very good
The products arrived in excelent conditions, and in the right time.
It was free-shipping ... Read more

Product Description
This new three-level series edition offers just the right balance of explanations and practice. The Advanced level offers in-depth explanations and challenging activities to help students refine their grammatical competence.

The Grammar Practice-Plus CD-ROM expands on materials covered in the texts.

Listen and Speak: Students hear sentences, select the correct response, and record their own voices.
Read and Write: Students practice identifying errors and correcting them.
Test and Review: Multiple choice tests help students check their progress.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

I have not received my book yet!
Dear Seller,

I have a complaint about my purchase. I'd like to know what was the problem? The book has never arrived! But I've already paid ...
I've been waiting my book.

Thanks ... ... Read more

Product Description
Success at school and beyond depends to a large extent on being able to make yourself understood. This book looks at the way adolescents express themselves and concentrates on the discrepancies in language use between academically successful and unsuccessful pupils in an educational setting. The authors analyse situations where transfer of information is the prime consideration and suggest ways in which the teacher can step in with practical help. The book explains in non-technical language and with humour the most important findings of a three-year research project into adolescent language. It uses many examples of transcibed speech to demonstrate how communication sometimes breaks down, disabling a pupil's performance and suggests how that performance can be improved. ... Read more