Study of language, like any other discipline, has naturally been developing ever since its inception. But it assumed an accelerated pace from the early twentieth century onwards with two or more paradigm-shifting outlooks, among which the 'socio-contextual surge onto the consideration of language functioning' led to the emergence of an approach…

This newsletter contains five articles. The first, "Discourse Structure in Reading," by Ron Shook, suggests that reading materials for the beginning ESL (English as a second language) reader often have three defects: (1) profusion of detail as question fodder; (2) an oversimplified syntax; and (3) an artificial construction that violates…

This book provides a discussion of rhetoric and its importance in second language learning in general, with specific remarks on problems in teaching English as a second language. Logic (not in the strictest philosophical sense), the basic rhetoric, is evolved out of a culture; it is not universal. Rhetoric is not universal either. Rhetorical…