Fundamentals of English: A Guide to Expressing and Analysing Meaning

Fundamentals of English provides clear explanations and examples of all the writing forms and language features a senior student is expected to use in essays, assignments and examinations.

Each section in Fundamentals of English includes a variety of practical exercises to assist students to learn and practice skills. Fundamentals of English Workbook is designed to be used as a classroom text but is also suited for independent use by students who need the material to effectively study senior English.

Contents

• Introduction
• The elements of effective communication

1 The basics of communication 

• Generating ideas
• Developing enthusiasm
• The impact of genre
• Writing style
• How do I understand or create a work?
• Point of view
• Getting down to details
• Clarifying ideas
• Organising ideas
• Refining ideas

2 Your own composition

• Thinking about words
• Getting the spelling right
• Spelling and the Internet
• Letter styles
• Grammar essentials
• Essentials about nouns
• Essentials about pronouns
• Essentials about verbs
• Essentials about adjectives
• Essentials about adverbs
• Essentials about prepositions
• Understanding and using emotive language in written text
• Examples to consider
• The emotive language of visual images
• Combining words effectively
• Essentials of sentence structure
• Conjunctions
• Using correct punctuation
• Full stops
• Capitals
• Commas
• Apostrophes
• Semicolons
• Exclamation marks
• Dashes
• Hyphens
• Colons
• Understanding and using tone
• Some important terms
• What kinds of attitude can the writer have?
• What is diction?
• Understanding register
• Formal English
• Colloquial register
• Slang
• The register of images
• Register and the Internet
• Jargon
• Expanding meaning - using literary techniques to advantage

3 Forms of writing

• What is an essay?
• Understanding the purpose
• The task or instruction words
• The topic words
• The limiting words
• Exploring the question
• Constructing your essay
• Getting started - the introduction
• Constructing paragraphs
• Connecting your paragraphs
• Drafting your concluding paragraph
• Evaluating your first draft
• Precision
• Unity
• Coherence
• Principles of presentation
• Using quotations
• Presenting your bibliography
• Footnotes and endnotes
• Writing dialogue
• The essential questions in close-up
• Writing description
• Capturing character
• Smart tips for the creative writing task
• Writing narrative
• Varying your approach even further
• The essentials of narratives
• Writing travelogue
• Writing autobiography
• Writing a poem
• Writing a script for television
• Writing a stage play
• Writing exposition
• Writing letters
• Using electronic mail (e-mail)

4 Workplace communication

• Getting the job: resumes and curriculum vitae
• What the CV includes
• Effective layout of a CV
• The covering letter
• The employment interview
• Preparation
• Types of interviews
• Interview skills
• Effective listening skills
• Questioning styles
• After the interview
• Writing reports
• Formatting your reports
• Conducting and participating in meetings
• The role of the secretary
• The meeting agenda
• Minutes of meetings
• The chair
• Conduct of meetings
• Writing to sell - effective advertising
• What is advertising?
• The types of advertising
• The principles of advertising
• How do advertisements achieve success?
• A final point
• Creating a website

5 Speaking out: - the art of oral persuasion

• Writing speeches
• The art of speech giving
• Ten tips on the art of speaking well
• Your friends and your voice
• Your voice itself
• Tone and mood
• Posture and your speech
• Other vocal points to work on
• Effective debating
• The essential roles of the team members
• Essential officials
• Marking a debate
• Some points on debating technique
• Using chat lines

6 Understanding and writing responses to literature

• Developing your comprehension skills
• Skim reading
• Close reading
• The reading task
• Smart tips for the reading task
• Honing your reading skills for reading tasks
• Preparing for the formal study of literature
• Traditional ballads
• Fables, parables and proverbs
• Myths
• Folktales
• Short stories
• The basics of poetry
• Ten keys to successful poetry analysis
• The forms of poetry
• The basic themes of poetry
• Useful technical terms to know when writing about poetry
• Poetry essay strategy
• The basics of plays
• The essentials of drama
• The importance of dialogue in drama
• The origins of theatre
• The world of Shakespeare
• The basics of novels
• Types of novels
• The essentials of novels

7 The media.

• The print media
• The structure of newspaper reports
• Identifying techniques of persuasion
• Visual media
• Film documentaries
• Motion pictures
• Movie genres

8 Computer research.

• Using CD-ROMs
• Using the Net

Answers to exercises