In recent years the concept of 'register' has been increasingly replaced by emphasis on the analysis of genre, which relates work in sociolinguistics, text linguistics and discourse analysis to the study of specialist areas of language. This book is a clear, authoritative guide to this complex area. He provides a survey of approaches to varieties of language, and considers these in relation to communication and task-based language learning. Swales outlines an approach to the analysis of genre, and then proceeds to consider examples of different genres and how they can be made accessible...

The author shows how similarities and differences between languages can influence grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation acquisition. Terence Odlin reconsiders a question that many language teachers and educational researchers have addressed: How much influence can a learner's native language have in making the acquisition of a new language easy or difficult? Odlin analyzes and interprets research showing many ways in which similarities and differences between languages can influence the acquisition of grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. In addition, he provides a detailed look at work on...