Books for sale
English Pronunciation: A Brief Guide for Spanish Speakers, 2nd Edition
Now in its second edition, this easy-to-read pronunciation guide helps language learners speak English more clearly and confidently, using everyday language examples and special exercises for both self-study and collaborative work. It shows how speakers of English as a foreign language can avoid being misunderstood in various contexts. The book examines how the Spanish language influences English pronunciation, concentrating on 11 fundamental pronunciation issues that have been observed in Spanish speakers of all ages around the world. The online audios (downloadable and accessible both by QR code and website link) feature native speakers communicating in real-life words and sounds. Learners can practice their listening skills and compare their own speaking to standard English accents and pronunciation.
The second edition includes a new chapter on challenging English sounds, as well as abbreviations, acronyms and up-to-date terms in IT and social media. The audio tracks have been improved, using the latest text-to-speech technology.
Available in paperback, hardcover and e-book at Amazon marketplaces around the world.
Phrasal Verbs: A New Reference
for English Learners and Teachers
For English language learners and teachers, phrasal verbs can be a challenge. They seem like an enigma. Even if they are learned in specific contexts, they are difficult to remember, and many find it a mystery that we insist on using them so often. Where did phrasal verbs come from? Why do they seem so complex? How can the verb "take" mean to remove, yet "take in" mean to trim, to receive money, to provide shelter, to observe, to understand and to be deceived?
At first glance, this might all seem part of the random and nonsensical nature of English. But all phrasal verbs have common ancestors in the realms of motion, location and direction. In this book, we will connect those literal origins with the figurative uses of the phrasal verbs that we hear and speak everyday. And we’ll see that phrasal verbs are, in fact, a fascinating part of what makes English so rich, unique and versatile.
Phrasal Verbs: A New Reference for English Learners and Teachers includes over 450 of the most commonly used phrasal verbs in English and groups them in "particle families," rather than by context, main verb or in the random selections that are often found in English language textbooks.
Useful for both English language learners and teachers, this book serves as a learning tool and a reference, with detailed definitions and alphabetized entries that are easily looked up.
Available in paperback at Amazon marketplaces around the world.
English Word Histories:
Animals & Insects
In our modern English language, the names we have given the creatures that share our planet at first seem ad-hoc, whimsical and downright bizarre. Why is that bulbous water dweller called a hippopotamus? And a giraffe? Where did the word “dog” come from? What about baboon, caribou or butterfly? And what really is a croak, a moo, a neigh or a bark? Some of these words are new arrivals to the English language and others are ancient utterances formed on farms and wild landscapes hundreds of years ago.
It turns out that a wide variety of bygone languages have contributed greatly to our modern animal vocabulary, including Old English, Old French, Greek and Latin, as well as the much older Proto-Germanic and Proto-Indo-European tongues. Celtic, Old Norse and indigenous North American words have also played important roles.
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Our modern animal words are often simple records of empirical observation, but they’re also chock-full of false connections, mistaken identities, erroneous second-hand accounts, religious symbolism, physical attributions, fear of the unknown and fantastic imaginations. Geese were once thought to have hatched from barnacles. Swifts were considered footless. Tortoises were beasts from the underworld and mammoths burrowed in subterranean tunnels. Cheetahs used to be leopards and giraffes were once called camels. The Greeks called the ostrich “camel sparrow.” Intellectuals once proclaimed that leopards and lions could mate and produce baby mules. Yet however these ideas might baffle and perplex us, their stories, in all their fantastical unrealities, have nonetheless formed the words that we utter today.
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English Word Histories: Animals & Insects is a reference of over 300 creature names and general vocabulary used by modern English speakers everyday. It is organized alphabetically in chapters of land animals, wildlife of the water, flying organisms, insects and arachnids, as well as general English vocabulary related to the critters, beasts and bugs of our world.
Available in paperback and hardcover at Amazon marketplaces around the world.