Prosody is concerned with properties that provide fluidity to speech: i.e., rhythm and melody. Rhythm means a regular pattern in the flow of things, such as the tick, tick, tick of a clock or the lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub of a beating heart. Melody means the ups and downs of voice. All spoken languages have rhythm and melody, but they differ in the way they occur and perform in speech. Speaking English fluently implies the ability to produce the rhythm and melody proper to English, the learning of which is the goal of this audiobook.

You're frustrated with not being understood. You're tired of shying away from conversations and presentations that keep you from making significant gains in your career and making connections in your social life. This guide is a culmination of all of the “mysterious secrets” that non-native English speakers search for on their journey to speaking with clear, fluent English pronunciation.

Language defines us as a species, placing humans head and shoulders above even the most proficient animal communicators. But it also beguiles us with its endless mysteries, allowing us to ponder why different languages emerged, why there isn't simply a single language, how languages change over time and whether that's good or bad, and how languages die out and become extinct.

English Grammar Rules You Must Know is the only book you will ever need to learn about the English language. You will learn all about nouns and verbs, adjectives and adverbs, punctuation, synonyms and antonyms, and more, in addition to writing paragraphs and composing essays across various contexts - from casual settings to professional environments. So, take note of this book, as it is the only one you will ever need to answer all your questions about the English language and grammar. Buy this book now, and get started on your new path to mastering the English language.

We all have that one older funny family member. You know the one, he tells stories from his experiences and usually has people rolling their eyes. William Stokes is that person! He presents a delightful collection of memories that are truly life lessons even today! Stokes, through his memories and wit, provides opportunities to learn through laughter, sharing of memories and love.

Do you want to be “ahead of the curve” in business vocabulary in time for your next big company meeting? Do you want to “get the ball rolling” on improving your communication with employees, employers, and possible clients who will work alongside you? In the world of business and finance, proper communication is key to achieving success, expanding your frontiers, and reaching your goals.

This course is for anyone who wants a strong foundation in English pronunciation, and a clear, concise explanation of how every English vowel and consonant sound is made. The bulk of the course is made up of simple and surprisingly effective drills of sounds and words to be spoken out loud, strengthening the learner’s ability to speak clearly and with confidence. The course is made up of almost 50 short lessons, each one less than 10 minutes. Use one or more of these recordings every day and drill out loud to see your pronunciation and confidence in speaking get you where you want.

The Polished Pronunciation Practice course combines three techniques to create a powerhouse memory method that will help you easily recall the proper pronunciation of each of the words. You’ll also enjoy a short story that incorporates all of the words you’ll be learning and perfecting. The story is suitable for all ages and can be enjoyed by everyone.

In the world we are living in, English has become the common language that people from different countries and cultures can use to communicate with one another. There are many reasons why people would want to learn English, but for a lot of them; It is work-related. Most large companies around the world require their employees to speak English. In some cases, these companies are requiring their workers to only use English at the workplace.

This extraordinary audio vocabulary course will help you avoid common errors in pronunciation, spelling, grammar, and usage. Every key word is defined, spelled out, carefully pronounced, and used in a sentence. You will never be caught in a blunder again.

Whether your goals are social or professional, Accent: American will effectively teach you how to articulate Standard American English clearly and confidently. American English may be difficult, but I've done my best with this book to make it simple, easy, and fun for everyone.

Word Workout is a practical audiobook for building vocabulary - a graduated program featuring thousands of words that begins with those known by most college graduates and ascends to words known only by the most educated, intelligent, and well-read adults. This workout is a comprehensive program, chock-full of information about synonyms, antonyms, and word origins, and replete with advice on proper usage and pronunciation.

After years of teaching intermediate students who never seemed to improve, I decided to find out what the problem was. Essentially, intermediate students get stuck because learning at this stage is a different type of learning than at the beginner stage. You have mastered the grammar and the basic vocabulary, but most textbooks just carry on like nothing has changed. However, what you need at the intermediate stage is not just more dry grammar and lists of vocabulary.

Likened to the works of Faulkner and Dickens when it was first published 20 years ago, this extraordinarily accomplished debut novel is a brilliantly plotted story of forbidden love and piercing political drama, centered on the tragic decline of an Indian family in the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India. Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, the twins Rahel and Esthappen fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family.

This book was specially written for older students (25+) of the English language who wishes to improve his/her English fluency to the next level but seems to have hit a plateau. Regardless of what actions are taken, progression is slow or limited. This book is essential for you to break through and not only improving your spoken skills but developing them so well regardless of your age. Armed with the proven tips, tricks, and techniques, you’ll discover that you’ll be soaring to an entirely new and exciting level of learning within days.

Japan, after suffering from a massive irreparable disaster, cuts itself off from the world. Children are so weak they can barely stand or walk: the only people with any get-go are the elderly. Mumei lives with his grandfather Yoshiro, who worries about him constantly. They carry on a day-to-day routine in what could be viewed as a post-Fukushima time, with all the children born ancient - frail and gray-haired, yet incredibly compassionate and wise. Mumei may be enfeebled and feverish, but he is a beacon of hope, full of wit and free of self-pity and pessimism.

Gass’ new novel moves from World War II Europe to a small town in postwar Ohio. In a series of variations, Gass gives us a mosaic of a life - futile, comic, anarchic - arranged in an array of vocabularies, altered rhythms, forms and tones, and broken pieces with music as both theme and structure, set in the key of middle C. It begins in Graz, Austria, 1938. Joseph Skizzen's father, pretending to be Jewish, leaves his country for England with his wife and two children to avoid any connection with the Nazis, who he foresees will soon take over his homeland....

Once upon a time (right about now) there was a planet (how about this one?) whose inhabitants consumed 36 billion gallons of beer each year (it's a fact, you can Google it). Among those affected, each in his or her own way, by all the bubbles, burps, and foam, was a smart, wide-eyed, adventurous kindergartner named Gracie; her distracted mommy; her insensitive dad; her non-conformist uncle; and a magical, butt-kicking intruder from a world within our world.

In the collection's marvelous title story, two aging vampires in a sun-drenched Italian lemon grove find their hundred-year marriage tested when one of them develops a fear of flying. In "The Seagull Army Descends on Strong Beach, 1979", a dejected teenager discovers that the universe is communicating with him through talismanic objects left in a seagull's nest. "Proving Up" and "The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis" find Russell veering into more sinister territory.

Father Greg Lockwood is unlike any Catholic priest you have ever met - a man who lounges in boxer shorts, who loves action movies, and whose constant jamming on the guitar reverberates "like a whole band dying in a plane crash in 1972". His daughter is an irreverent poet who long ago left the church's country. When an unexpected crisis leads her and her husband to move back into her parents' rectory, their two worlds collide.

In searing, beautiful prose, Sam Shepard's extraordinary narrative tells in a brilliant braid of voices the story of an unnamed narrator who traces, before our rapt ears, his memories of work, adventure, and travel as he undergoes medical tests and treatments for a condition that is rendering him more and more dependent on the loved ones who are caring for him. The narrator's memories and preoccupations often echo those of our current moment - for here are stories of immigration and community, inclusion and exclusion, suspicion and trust.

Follow New York Times best-selling author Mary Roach - but be careful not to trip - as she weaves through personal anecdotes and everyday musings riddled with her uncanny wit and amazingly analytical eye. These essays, which found a well-deserved home within the pages of Reader's Digest as the column "My Planet," detail the inner workings of hypochondriacs, hoarders, and compulsive cheapskates. (Did we mention neurotic interior designers and professional list makers?) For Roach, humor is hidden in the most unlikely places, which means that nothing is off limits.

Alexandra Fuller tells the idiosyncratic story of her life growing up white in rural Rhodesia as it was becoming Zimbabwe. The daughter of hardworking, yet strikingly unconventional English-bred immigrants, Alexandra arrives in Africa at the tender age of two. She moves through life with a hardy resilience, even as a bloody war approaches. Narrator Lisette Lecat reads this remarkable memoir of a family clinging to a harsh landscape and the dying tenets of colonialism.

Gypsies, faith-healers, moonshiners, and snake handlers weave through Drema's childhood in 1940s Appalachia after her father is killed in the coal mines, her mother goes off to work as a Rosie the Riveter, and she is left in the care of devout Pentecostal grandparents. What follows is a spitfire of a memoir that feels like a novel with intrigue, sweeping emotion, and indisputable charm. Drema's coming of age is colored by tent revivals with Grandpa, poetry-writing hobos, and traveling carnivals, and through it all, she serves witness to a multi-generational family.

Finnegans Wake is the greatest challenge in 20th-century literature. Who is Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker? And what did he get up to in Phoenix Park? And what did Anna Livia Plurabelle have to say about it? In the rich nighttime and the language of dreams, here are history, anecdote, myth, folk tale and, above all, a wondrous sense of humor, colored by a clear sense of humanity. In this exceptional reading by the Irish actor Barry McGovern, with Marcella Riordan, the world of the Wake is more accessible than ever before.

For the first time ever, hear Woody Allen’s Mere Anarchy in the author’s own distinctive and hilarious voice. Here, in his first short-story collection since his three classics Getting Even, Without Feathers, and Side Effects, Allen has managed to write a book that answers the most profound questions of human existence.

In his debut collection of short stories, Robert Sheehan disappears into characters, challenging the complacencies of everyday experience, often from entirely unexpected angles. Informed by the author’s peripatetic life, Disappearing Act reflects on the absurdity of human behaviour. Sheehan delves deep into his characters’ streams of self-talk and self-imposed delusions, exploring the dark impulses that lurk below the shiny surfaces of many outwardly normal lives.

For 14-year-old Liyana Abboud, life in St. Louis, Missouri is perfect. She loves shopping in the nearby stores and walking down streets where she knows everyone. Even better, she has just had her first kiss. But her father is moving the family to Jerusalem - the land where he was born. Suddenly Liyana finds herself a stranger in a threatening world.

At 36, Quoyle, a third-rate newspaperman, is wrenched violently out of his workaday life when his two-timing wife gets her just desserts. He retreats with his two daughters to his ancestral home on the starkly beautiful Newfoundland coast, where a rich cast of local characters all play a part in Quoyle's struggle to reclaim his life. As three generations of his family cobble up new lives, Quoyle confronts his private demons - and the unpredictable forces of nature and society - and begins to see the possibility of love without pain or misery.

One month into our stay, we'd managed to dispatch most of our charges. We executed the chickens. One of the cats disappeared, clearly disgusted with our urban ways. And Lucky [the cow] was escaping almost daily. It seemed we didn't have much of a talent for farming. And we still had eleven months to go." Antonia Murphy, you might say, is an unlikely farmer. Born and bred in San Francisco, she spent much of her life as a liberal urban cliché, and her interactions with the animal kingdom rarely extended past dinner.

You're frustrated with not being understood. You're tired of shying away from conversations and presentations that keep you from making significant gains in your career and making connections in your social life. This guide is a culmination of all of the “mysterious secrets” that non-native English speakers search for on their journey to speaking with clear, fluent English pronunciation.

Whether your goals are social or professional, Accent: American will effectively teach you how to articulate Standard American English clearly and confidently. American English may be difficult, but I've done my best with this book to make it simple, easy, and fun for everyone.

Do people have trouble understanding you? Are you yearning for your dream career, but your accent is stopping you? Is English your second language? Do you believe that your accent may be keeping you from the advancement you've been seeking? In Accent Reduction For Professionals, you'll discover secrets of reducing - and eliminating - your foreign accent. With this guide, you'll quickly learn the easiest ways to sound more like an American and dramatically improve the way you sound.

Joanna Gray has been training people for over twenty years in the art of voice training and accent reduction to achieve Received Pronunciation, otherwise known as BBC English. Joanna has successfully helped thousands of people across the world to reduce an accent and attain a high standard of English and has worked with professionals from all walks of life, including doctors, lawyers, accountants, CEO's and actors to name but a few.

The Polished Pronunciation Practice course combines three techniques to create a powerhouse memory method that will help you easily recall the proper pronunciation of each of the words. You’ll also enjoy a short story that incorporates all of the words you’ll be learning and perfecting. The story is suitable for all ages and can be enjoyed by everyone.

This course is for anyone who wants a strong foundation in English pronunciation, and a clear, concise explanation of how every English vowel and consonant sound is made. The bulk of the course is made up of simple and surprisingly effective drills of sounds and words to be spoken out loud, strengthening the learner’s ability to speak clearly and with confidence. The course is made up of almost 50 short lessons, each one less than 10 minutes. Use one or more of these recordings every day and drill out loud to see your pronunciation and confidence in speaking get you where you want.

These books are specially written for advanced students of the English language who wish to improve their English fluency to the next level but seem to have hit a plateau. Regardless of what actions are taken, progression is slow or limited. Armed with the proven tips, tricks, and techniques in this book, you’ll discover that you’ll be soaring to an entirely new and exciting level of learning within days. On top of that, these guidelines can be used nearly effortlessly.

In the world we are living in, English has become the common language that people from different countries and cultures can use to communicate with one another. There are many reasons why people would want to learn English, but for a lot of them; It is work-related. Most large companies around the world require their employees to speak English. In some cases, these companies are requiring their workers to only use English at the workplace.

After years of teaching intermediate students who never seemed to improve, I decided to find out what the problem was. Essentially, intermediate students get stuck because learning at this stage is a different type of learning than at the beginner stage. You have mastered the grammar and the basic vocabulary, but most textbooks just carry on like nothing has changed. However, what you need at the intermediate stage is not just more dry grammar and lists of vocabulary.

Sure, you can learn English with a language course or a textbook just fine, and climb up the ranks in terms of your grasp of the language....but are you sure you can talk like a native? For starters, many expressions used by fluent speakers of English can’t exactly be learned in a book, and it can be frustrating to realize that your formal learning hasn’t been enough to teach you the way people talk in real life. Sometimes, it’s all about having the right tools at your disposal...and this is where The Great Book of American Idioms comes in!

Imagine being able to communicate effectively in English, understand others with ease, and convey your views, ideas, and experiences with confidence. Imagine having conversations with people from different backgrounds, offering your opinions, and doing so without worrying about making an error.