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Lots of books can strengthen your writing. Few also leave you smiling. You're looking at one. "Word Up!" serves up tips and insights for anyone who wants to know how to write with umph. This book does what too few writing books do: it practices while preaching, shows while telling, uses powerful writing to talk about powerful writing.

You may write blog posts, e-books, e-mails, executive summaries, e-zine articles, hospital-hallway signs, presentations, proposals, lab reports, letters to the editor, love letters, lunch-bag notes, movie reviews, news stories, novels, online help, plays, poems, proposals, recipes, reference manuals, scholarly critiques, speeches, term papers, tweets, user-interface text, video scripts, web pages, or white papers.

You may write for a million readers or for one. You may use a pen, a typewriter, a wiki, or an XML authoring tool. You may be a grammar snob, or you may think that “grammar snobs are great big meanies.” You may write because something within you says you can’t not write—or because your boss says you can’t not write. No matter what you write, or how or why, you and I and every other writer have two things in common: we use words, and we want someone to want to read them.

How do you get people to want to read your words? Know your subject. Know your audience. And write powerfully.

"Word Up!" helps you write powerfully. [close]

[close] The ELT Daily Journal is a personal journal for new teachers taking a training course or teaching ESL or EFL for the first time. This unique book gives teachers space to write down their thoughts and experiences, and pick up some basic tips and activities, gradually gaining confidence through reflection and practice. It allows teachers to develop at their own pace, writing daily entries or just writing a few notes once or twice a week.

The journal pages contain the following:

Icebreakers (Getting to Know You Activities) - Activities that help students learn names and learn more about each other

Warmers - Activities for the beginning of a lesson

Closers - Activities for the end of a lesson

Classic activities - Well-known ELT standards that every teacher should know about

Something to ponder - Questions to help new teachers examine their own teaching

Top tips - Suggestions for the main areas of teaching (listening, speaking, reading, writing, grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation)

Stop it! - Common mistakes new teachers make and how to avoid them

One highlight of this book is a collection of teaching tips from some famous ELT experts, ranging from legendary authors to up-and-coming bloggers. Another feature worth mentioning is a resource section that points the reader towards additional helpful information, both in print and online.

The ELT Daily Journal is intended for new teachers, but would also be suitable for teachers who have already started teaching, or teachers who are coming back to ELT after many years of work in another field.

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Hall Houston currently teaches undergraduate students at Kainan University in Luzhu, Taiwan. His practical articles on language teaching have been published in periodicals such as English Teaching Professional, Modern English Teacher, IATEFL Voices, IH Journal and It's for Teachers. He has a Master's Degree in Foreign Language Education from The University of Texas at Austin. [close]

[close] ENTER TO WIN AN ADVANCE COPY OF ANARCHY AND THE FIRST BOOK IN THE SERIES, ADVENT!

Corporal “Goose” Maculloch of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police isn’t expecting much from her new posting: one of those back end of nowhere places where nothing ever happens. That’s until a girl who's been accused of murder disappears from a locked cell on Goose’s watch. On top of that, something’s going funny with the Internet…

As the world beyond begins to fail, Goose tracks the vanished girl through the wilderness of Vancouver Island.

Meanwhile in Cornwall a desolate child leaves the home that has kept her safe all her life and strikes out into the unknown.

And a mother, half-mad with grief for her lost son, sets off to find him.

There is a place where all their journeys meet.

But someone is watching the roads… [close]