COMMENTS:Ahmed Faried

The book particularly focuses on only "Balanced Corpora" which are to be created to conduct "descriptive linguistic analysis" and thus the intended audience would be somehow restricted to Descriptive Linguists. Other Corpus Linguists with other interests should not expect much wealth of information about their subject of interest. For example, Linguists with Computational interests would find the discussion of tagging and parsing in Chapter four is treated in "less detail" than they would expect. The study questions after each chapter suit the purpose of the book as an Introduction to the subject as well as making the book suitable for in class courses. Although the questions are not many in number, ranging from four to seven questions for each chapter, they do help in asserting and focusing on the important information of each chapter and they are specially helpful in this respect as every chapter has much extensive information and numerous thoroughly-explained examples. One simple yet valuable addition the author does not choose to include, even between small practice or in the footnote, is the number of the corresponding section pertaining to each question. This would have the advantage of allowing a student to easily return back to the specific section corresponding to a certain question to revise whichever point he does not grasp fully.There can be noticed that the book made no use of any illustrations like logical flowcharts that can help enhance the presentation of his topics as well as enhance the reader's grasping of the logical steps in the many multi-step processes discussed in the book. Although the author has made use of tables however, it can be further noted that these tables are used merely to state the results of an analysis or frequency counts of words or grammatical constructions. A much better use of tables would have been in conducting a comparison between every two or more alternatives introduced throughout the book. For instance, the lengthy discussion of the various features of the different taggers and parsers available to annotate a corpus in chapter 4 could have been summarized in a comparison table that would not only facilitate the understanding but also gives a very handy and precise reference that could be consulted whenever needed without having to read through running pages of explanation again and again. Another related issue is that the author does not include a page containing a list of figures and tables in the book that could have also helped in locating a specific table related to a specific case study sought. The author has chosen to immediately delve with the reader into the vast sea of corpus linguistics even as early as in the preface, which might make some readers either bored or frustrated. After stating that the "Brown Corpus" is considered the "first computer corpus", the author compares between it as a "Balanced" corpus containing different genres of written English and The Penn Treebank corpus which is an "Unbalanced" one that contains a "heterogeneous" collection of texts and is essentially larger (4.9 million words). In connection with the two previous definitions of a corpus mentioned by the author, he further states that the two corpuses are different in composition and uses. The Balanced one is of most value for linguistic researchers to conduct "linguistic description and analysis" while the Unbalanced one is primarily created for carrying researches in Natural Language Processing (NLP), which demands a large corpus, and is of value for Computational linguists. But the two linguists cherishes one aim, which is to base their results on "Real" data rather than contrived one and hence he concludes that Corpora must be "carefully created" to be sure that the results of any analysis to be conducted on them will be "valid". The author also uses a highly formal style throughout his book. This strict style is evident from the first chapter which begins by a serious discussion of the conflict between Generative Grammarians and Corpus linguists. Throughout this first-hand discussion, the author introduces many specialized terms and subjects. He introduces the Brown Corpus as being the first corpus created in 1960s, a time when generative grammar was dominant in linguistics. The author then proceeds to explain the difference between language Competence and Performance and how Corpus Linguistics is concentrated mainly on performance or "the actual usage of language" ***(get a formal definition) while Generative grammar is more concerned with language competence ***(get a formal definition). The discussion further proceeds to Chomsky's three types of adequacy. For Chomsky, the highest level of adequacy is the explanatory one and thus he sees that Corpus linguistics is limited to the Observational or Descriptive adequacy only. Explanatory adequacy can help in deducing the rules for the Universal Grammar which is one of the main aims for Generative grammarians. On the other hand Corpus Linguists do not approve of the "highly abstract and decontextualized" study of language. Evidently dealing with much extensive theoretical concepts from the very beginning of the book may leave some undesired first impression in the reader who would feel very much overwhelmed. These information should have better either delayed to be included later on or be dealt with much more briefly. In chapter 2, the author Discusses the planning of the corpus. he shows how the "planned uses" of the corpus should be considered first because different uses demand different plans. Another point stressed is that the planning should be rather "a cyclical process" which demands "constant re-evaluation" during the corpus compilation. The author proceeds to explain the "methodological assumptions" that should be considered in planning the corpus. To be practical, he takes the BNC (British National Corpus) as an example which seems, to some extent, an inappropriate choice. Firstly, because this is such a huge corpus totaling about 100 million words and thus considered "one of the largest corpora". it seems not at all appropriate for beginners to provide a case study for them. Secondly, a beginner in Corpus Linguistics is unlikely to encounter problems like those encountered during the BNC compilation. The different criteria in planning a corpus are then explored in details including: the overall length of a corpus, which the author advises to be determined by two factors: the available resources for the project and the kind of studies the corpus would permit. The other criteria are the types of genres to include in a corpus, the length of individual text samples, the number of texts and range of speakers or writers, determining the time-frame for texts to be included, the inclusion of native vs. non-native speakers and a category of other criteria grouped under "sociolinguistic variables" including gender balance, age, level of education and others. In this respect, the section explaining "gender balance" seems relatively short with just less than one page. At its end, the author concludes that the "variables" affecting gender balance arise many difficulties that can not be addressed in one particular way and thus, he leaves the compiler to his own sense of judgment to "deal with them as much as is possible". Also, he did not mention real examples from well-known corpora to illustrate how such problems were dealt with, while he almost always tends to provide a real example for every issue in the other criteria.Collecting and Computerizing data is considered the next step in a corpus compilation and, as the author considers it, the first step in the actual creation of a corpus. This step is expressed in details in Chapter 2. in collecting Speech and Writing, the author informs the reader that some difficulties may face him specially when obtaining permissions for copyrighted materials. These difficulties may result in deciding to make slight changes to the original design of the corpus, however this must be carried in a careful way in order not to "Compromise the integrity" of the corpus. Firstly, Methods of collecting and computerizing speech are discussed. In recording multi-party dialogues, the author lays emphasizes on obtaining only "natural speech" and warns against recording "unnatural speech" that may results in the speaker's awareness of their speech being recorded and since also "surreptitious speech" is prohibited, to overcome this problem, the author suggests that the participants should offered a written description of the project before the actual recording. Also it may help to record a conversation "as lengthy" as possible, in order for the transcriber to choose the most natural as well as "coherent" and "unified" parts to include in the Corpus. Some purely technical issues are discussed including types of Tape Recorders, Microphones, etc. Secondly, Concerning the collection of written texts, the problem is usually associated with obtaining a permission from the authors of those texts. Such problem has resulted in the use of only 25 percent of the material originally planned for inclusion in the ICE-USA corpus. The author suggests making use of the online texts since they are easily obtained and computerized. Keeping records of the speeches and texts gathered in order to help in organizing the material as well as in future uses of the corpus is an important issue that the author sheds light on. Such information includes when and where the recording takes place and who are the participants and a wealth of ethnographic information about them. The next step is Computerizing Data, which the author considers a painstakingly process specially for transcribing speech. The author also discusses the advantage and disadvantages of using ASCII and Unicode in saving files and the methods of organizing the individual texts in categories. The most important part discussed is how to insert "structural markup" into a text like tags to indicate speech overlap and Speaker identification Tags. Transcribing speech is considered a difficult and tedious task in addition to its being just an "artificial process". The author informs the reader that he must decide beforehand how much in spoken text he wishes to include in the transcription of it, which is an issue that corpora compilers have never reach an agreement upon. The author made a good point when he mentioned two examples from two extremes: one is the Corpus of Spoken Professional English which contains minimal information about the speech in its transcription and The Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English which contains an exact transcription of the spoken conversations including (hesitations, repetitions, partially uttered words, etc. as well as annotation marking various features of intonation such as "tone unit boundaries, pauses and pitch contours". This has the advantage of allowing a broad range of studies that can be conducted on the corpus with much confidence about the authenticity of the data. However the author concludes that whether the transcription of speech contains minimal or detailed description, it is impossible to reflect all of the "subtleties" of speech. This is due to the interference of many other "Paralanguage" factors that contributes to the interpretation of a conversation from "Gestures and Facial Expression" to the attitude of the participants towards each other. The practices of "Representing Speech in Standard Orthographic form" is a very important part in which there are many words and symbols introduced to the reader. These symbols represent the various speech features like vocalized pauses, speech overlap and linked expressions which are two words pronounced as one word for ex. "gotta" for (got to) and "hafta" for (have to). In this respect there is no convention for transcribing these expressions as either one or two words but the compiler have to decide which form to use throughout the corpus according to the type of analysis the corpus would permit. The Part of Computerizing written texts is very brief and just tackles the problem of computerizing texts from earlier period where sometimes more than one version exist. Handwritten texts as well as other types of texts are not mentioned that is because the author was obviously concerned about the difficulties of computerizing speech than written texts throughout this chapter. The fourth chapter is very interesting and is concerned with the annotation of the corpus. Three kinds of markup are discussed: Structural, Tagging and Parsing. It begins by a brief explanation of the various Markup systems from the old SGML-conformant, the TEI standards and the more recent XML markup systems in addition to a system of markup for describing Intonation in speech. The difference between Rule-Based and Probabilistic taggers are explained The author begins in chapter four by the hypothesis that annotation is necessary for a corpus to be "fully useful to potential users" however, he does not further support this hypothesis however instead, his discussion seems to suggest the opposite. The author concludes that Although recently-developed taggers can achieve an accuracy of more than 95 percent, the remaining inaccuracies can be "more extensive" than one might think and thus every automatically tagged corpus must be subjected to human "post-editing" and thus requires labor-intensive work. The Tagsets (the number of tags that a tagger can insert in a text *get a formal definition if possible) can vary significantly and different tagsets represent more or less "differing conceptions of English grammar". Even Parsers have even lower accuracies than taggers and their accuracy range from "70 to 80 percent at best". Thus requiring more varying levels of "human intervention". Parser can yield much errors specially when encountered with constructions like Coordination which is a frequent construction in both written and speech. The sentence "the child broke his arm and his wrist and his mother called a doctor" can pose many challenges for an automatic parser. This arises from the fact that "And" here is used to join two phrases: "his arm, his wrist" as well as to join the first clause with the second one: "his mother…". Furthermore, the grammar underlying each parser reflects "particular conceptions of grammar" and thus different parsers will yield annotations that differ in details. Thus since the corpus compiler can not fully predict the types of analysis to be conducted on the corpus and given the fact that there is largely no standard parsers or taggers that can account for every possible linguistic analysis that might be conducted on a corpus as well as the fact that there exists relatively small number of well-known corpora that are fully parsed. The author does not make a strong argument to support his view of the necessity for annotation for every corpus specially if we learn that some automatic annotation is itself a kind of analysis as each represent "different conceptions" of grammar that may obscure some features or mislead a linguist who might use the corpus in his research. Even the case study of analyzing a corpus the author presents throughout chapter five does make use of only one parsed sub-corpora and other six sub-corpora that are not parsed at all.The Fifth chapter is taking the reader form the prospective of a corpus compiler to that of a corpus user or a corpus linguist. This prospective is comprehensively explored through a case-study of investigating the occurrence of pseudo-titles in the press in the ICE Corpus. The case study approach is useful as it makes the phases of conducting an analysis as much "related" and coherent as possible. also the emphasize on conducting an analysis that is both "quantities and qualitative" as well as the necessity to deduce some significant conclusions from the analysis is a good point and echoes practically what the author stated in the first chapter that Corpus linguistics can even exceed the "Descriptive adequacy" and achieve the "Explanatory" one. This chapter is really extensive and guides the researcher step by step not only through the process of conducting an analysis but also, from framing the research question and defining clearly the concepts to be used during the research, to, evaluating different corpora available for their usefulness in the analysis. The author, in this chapter, also explores and compares options and guides the researcher in making decisions and linking specific issues to more general questions whenever possible. for instance in the section of "subjecting the results of a corpus study to statistical analysis", the author explains the different approaches of various linguists towards Statistical tests. He explains both the simple statistical test "frequency count" which is performed by many linguists and the more advanced statistical tests like, the Chi-Square statistical test, that are helpful to determine whether similarities or differences exist in a corpus and to determine that these similarities or differences are "statistically significant or not". The chapter is really valuable to any corpus linguist beginner pursuing to conduct a certain linguistic analysis.

EXCELLENT: no major comments, just take care of the capitalization remark.

COMMENTS:Omnia Ahmed Ali

In unit two the author tries to “look at the qualities and characteristics we associate with men and women…by looking at the language we use to describe the sexes”. The author starts doing so by using the notions of denotation and connotation through which he made it clear that denotation, “the dictionary definition of the word”, is never enough as connotation is needed because it reflects “who is using the terms and how they are deployed”. Then he provides a number of examples to simplify these abstract terms like how the words ‘bachelor’ and ‘spinster’ have different connotative meanings though they have the same denotative one. In the denotative meaning they both mean an unmarried male or female; however the word ‘bachelor’ has a rather positive connotation, meaning that the man is single by choice or “playing in the field”. The word ‘spinster’ on the other hand has a negative connotation, meaning that a woman has been “left on the shelf”. This could be related to how and why people use the same terms but in a completely different way about males and females. At the same time it could reflect the power of implicit meanings which reflects the speaker’s cultural values. Through implicitness the speaker can deliver a certain hidden message through the connotative meaning of the word. Having presented the idea of explicitness; the author very tactfully shifts to the notion of collocation. Through which he explains how certain words tend to occur more or even only with males and others with females. An activity elaborates the idea as it explains why speakers use different terms to describe males and females; for example why words like ‘hunk’, ‘physique’, and ‘handsome’ collocate only with males, whereas ‘buxom’, ‘figure’, ‘pretty’ and ‘long-legged’ collocate with females. At the same time it elaborates how even the words that could collocate with both males and females tend to have different connotations, for example ‘strong’ while it suggest physical ability when used with men; it implies a psychological strength when used with women. The author then makes use of a recent study to clarify the notion even further “based on the Cobuild corpus…words for physical attractiveness (pretty, sexy, glamorous) collocate most frequently with ‘women’, while terms to describe height, abilities and personality most frequently collocate with ‘man’”. This in fact sheds a light on the speaker’s cultural background; it reflects how male are perceived as being “logical, rational, aggressive…etc”, whereas women are thought to be “emotional, submissive, and empathic”. This can prove that language is gendered; that is when using a certain word to refer to a male or a female it reflects the speaker’s “social knowledge” about both genders. In fact this idea of socialization, which is the process of acquiring our social knowledge, explains a lot about the speaker’s linguistic behaviour which is the result of that long process that starts with the beginning of the person’s life.

EXCELLENT

COMMENTS:Aya Mohammed

Unit two is a great example of Angela Goddard’s and Lindsey Mean Patterson’s analytical style. Throughout the unit, they try to prove that the English language is gendered and that “we make up gender as we go along.” From the title of the unit, “making up gender”, the reader acknowledges(realizes) its main subject. In fact, the writers were successful in proving that cultural background affects our language greatly. Despite this, the unit is not well-organized. They start with describing the effect of culture on the language of adults. For example, adjectives used to describe men and women and how “we have sex-exclusive vocabulary, language that is used to describe either males or females (such as ‘hunk’ and ‘buxom’)” or “language where the linguistic item remains the same but the meaning changes according to whether it is men or women who are being described .” Then they return to the period of childhood proving(claiming) that “learning about gender starts at a very early age. From birth onwards we are given certain types of toys, dressed in certain types of clothes, talked about and to in a certain way and told what(which) behaviours are acceptable and which are not.” Finally they move back to adulthood then the language used in fictive writing. Thus, though the unit is quite informative, little arrangement would have made it easier on the reader to understand it.
Good Part

Unit three continues to discuss the relationship between culture, gender and language. Yet, the main focus of the unit is to “explore the thinking and associated language features involved in stereotyping and marking.” Angela Goddard and Lindsey Mean Patterson try to prove that “the way our mind works is strongly related to our language and our culture, because it is through these that we perceive and understand the ‘real world’.” Actually, they were quite successful in this. First, they point out that since we do not know how our minds work, we tend to describe abstract ideas metaphorically “because they are hard to ‘get at’.” The metaphors that we use depend largely on our culture and that is why we say “my memory is full” or “I’m in active mode today” instead of “I can’t get my brain into gear” or “I’m a bit rusty.” This is due to the fact that computers are new technology and cars are old ones. Second, they state that we categorize the information we receive from the world around us because “categorizing allows us to generate ‘everyday’ thinking which is automatic, quick, and effortless, without which interacting with the world would become a long and laborious process.” So since “the basis of the brain’s cognitive system is categories, and since categories are labelled linguistically”, then “language influences our thinking and reasoning via the process of categorization.” Finally, they explain how the process of categorization works. Every category has a cognitive model which puts things together in a group. These category models need to be simplified so that thinking and language use would be easy. This is accomplished through social knowledge. “We learn them through socialization and language acquisition so that social knowledge is mainly integrated into the ways we think without us being aware.” The cognitive models which represent central members are called prototypes. The construction of a few group members and the application of these to the whole group is stereotyping. So, they succeeded in proving that there is a relationship between thought, culture and language.Furthermore, through marking, they were able to show that English language is gendered. “Linguistic meanings can derive as much from their structural relationships as from the specific markings that occur on the words themselves.” Marking has many forms. One of them is part of the morphological system of English. For example, “suffixes such as ‘ess’ and ‘ette’.” They proved that “we have pairs of terms where the unmarked form is male, and the marked form female. Not only does this suggest that the male figure is the ‘norm’ and the female one ‘deviant’, but the female form clearly has derived status and, in the case of ‘ette’, implies diminution or imitation (cigarette is a small cigar, suedette is ‘false’ suede.”

NICE

COMMENTS: Omnia Mostafa

In order to make the reader grasps the information easily, Nunan employs some maps and illustrations.He,for instance,makes a list in which he collects the categories and subcategories of cohesion in English.This way fixes(another verb) the information in the reader’s mind.Another example is when Nunan examines,in one of the book’s sections, the ways in which information is organized beyond the sentence.He mentions that there are number of different approaches to discourse analysis.One of these is what the writer calls the “super sentence” school.This has concerned itself with identifying regularly recurring patterns in discourse .This approach is similar to that taken by sentence grammarians.Those grammarians aim to establish rules for describing sentences of a language.Such rules are concerned of(rephrase) those elements that are obligatory to the sentence and those that are optional.One of the rules stipulates that a well-formed sentence must contain a noun phrase,followed by a verb phrase,followed by another noun phrase..The sentence may contain an adverbial phrase and it is optional.In the same way,discourse grammars would specify those optional and obligatory elements that would differentiate between coherent and non-coherent discourse.Then, Nunan brings an extract of a second language classroom interaction.The interaction seems to be made up of a series of recurring patterns.To illustrate, the teacher initiates the interaction by asking a question, and then , one or more students respond and the teacher provides some sort of evaluation of the response.Here ,the author uses a pattern to describe this three-part structure.As a matter of fact,the pattern is not Nunan’s but Sinclair’s and Coulthard’s.They called the three-part structure “an exchange” and the three components making up the exchange “moves”.The moves are made up of “speech acts”.They found that entire lessons consisted of transactions which are made up of these three-part exchanges.

Well-written.

COMMENTS:Radwa Saied

The back matter of “The Bilingual Family” consists of two sections: The Bibliography and The Index. Firstly, The Bibliography contains a list of journals and internet sites which are seen by the authors to be of great use for the readers. Then, the authors listed a great number of references and sources used in the book. Actually, the references are very accurate. They are all primary sources. They are listed in alphabetical, logical order. This makes it easy for the readers to read, analyze and refer to them.(This is the norm in references. The authors did not do anything new) Moreover, the authors did not depend, in their references, on a certain period of time but they use references covering various ages and times. This makes the subject of the book chronologically totally covered. Secondly, The Index is, also, accurate and simplified. The authors mention certain terms which they use in their book and which may not be understandable for the readers. The authors determine the pages where these terms are mentioned in the book and define them in section III of the book (The Alphabetical Reference Guide).For example: the word ‘Accent’, which is found in pages 12, 55, 69-70, 137, is accurately defined in section III of the book. Really, this makes the book and the terms in it very accurate for the readers. Thus the authors apparently succeed in conveying the subject for(to) the readers through their valuable and accurate Bibliography, Index and Sources.Actually, “The Bilingual Family” succeeds to convey a certain message to the readers; How to raise their children bilingually and How to use the right methods to do so. The book greatly helped the bilingual families in their bilingual process by introducing complete and sufficient information and bilingual experiences to them. Thus, there is no need to refer to other works on bilingualism to raise bilingual children.“A Parents’ and Teachers’ Guide to Bilingualism” by Colin Baker is a book dealing with the same subject; Bilingualism. By Comparison, the two books are good and successful guides to Bilingualism. “The Bilingual Family” deals with the subject from head to toe. The book tackled Bilingualism from the birth of the child till he becomes a bilingual child. The Authors specifies a whole chapter in the beginning of the book in order to talk about the child and his first language acquisition before beginning to talk about bilingualism in chapter two of the book. This makes the subject clearer for the readers as it is tackled from the beginning till the end. On the other hand, Baker’s book tackles the subject in the form of questions and answers. Baker’s book does not tackle the stages of the bilingual child’s life from his birth. Moreover, “The Bilingual Family” contains sixteen case studies which enhance the reader’s understanding of the bilingual process. On the other hand, Colin Baker’s book contains only questions and answers about Bilingualism without mentioning any case studies of bilingual children and this makes the subject more vague for the readers and lacking concrete evidence.Also, “The Bilingual Family” defines the concept of Bilingualism and the concepts related to it in chapter two of the book (p.22) before beginning to talk about how to bring up bilingual children. On the contrary, “A Parents’ and Teachers’ Guide to Bilingualism” tackles the subject directly without defining it’s concepts to the readers first. Clearly, this makes the subject less understandable for the readers.Furthermore, the two books tackle the same point of the shared culture or the Biculture that the bilingual child should have. “The Bilingual Family” defines Culture as “a way of life of the society in which we grow up, influences our habits, our customs, the way we dress and eat our beliefs and values, our ideas and feelings, our notions of politeness and beauty”. The book, also, mentions that the cultures’ aspects are assimilated unconsciously just by being brought up in a certain society. Also, the authors say that if the people are of a certain culture and they become aware of the people’s other culture, they will have a deep ‘sense of shock’. For example: “Our world can be turned upside down when we learn that ‘they’ eat snails, mint sauce, or sheeps’ eyes”. The book mentions that Bilingualism and Biculturalism do not necessarily coincide. The authors define Biculturalism as :an individual two co-existing cultures. Moreover, the book mentions the fact that many Monolinguals are bicultural. For example: “those Irish, Scots and welsh people who despite having English as their sole language, maintain a cultural identity which they do not share with the English (for example: in terms of the institutions such as the legal and the educational systems and in their tastes and customs)”.Actually, “people whose lives are shared between two communities, exhibit various combinations of two distinct cultures”. Meaning that they feel at ease in any culture of the two cultures.Baker’s book, also, tackles this point of “sharing two cultures”. He asks a question which is “My children can speak two languages. How can I help them to belong to two cultures?” .Baker answers this question for his readers saying that “Merely speaking a language to the child conveys culture to that child…through culture the child learns a whole way of life”. However, the child can speak a language and yet he cannot act this language. For example: those people are said to be speaking Spanish but they do not act Spanish. Baker says that a child should be made, by the help of his parents, to ‘Identify’ himself with a particular language culture. He provides the parents with the ways by which they can make their children belong to a particular language culture. Colin Baker says that parents should make their children meet speakers of their two languages and visit a variety of cultural events. Parents can, also, introduce their children to “the cultures that surround each language”. “Where first-hand experience is not possible, T.V and video tapes allow a second-hand experience”. Baker says that introducing the child to wider ranges of cultures that goes with each language will widen the “horizons of the child…and give the world a view where there are fewer barriers and more bridges”.Thus, the two books tackle, to some extent, the same point but from different perspectives. All in all, “The Bilingual Family” is more successful than” A Parents’ and Teachers’ Guide to Bilingualism” by Colin Baker. This is because the first book tackles the overall bilingual process. It defines all the concepts concerning bilingualism and those concepts related to this broad concept .Actually, this really establishes an authoritative book namely” The Bilingual Family” by Edith Harding-Esch and Philip Riley.

This part is well-written. EXCEPT for the repeated use of the word TACKLE. Use synonyms.

Actually, “The Bilingual Family” is written by two professional linguists: Edith Harding-Esch and Philip Riley. Edith Harding-Esch is French. She is a Senior Research Fellow in Language Education at The University of Cambridge and a former member of Centre de Recherchés Et d’Applications Pédagogiques en langues (CRAPEL) at the University of Nancy. She has various academic researches and studies in the applied linguistics, second language learning ,Bilingual acquisition, Bilingual education, Multilingualism, factors of language change, comparative education, pedagogical cultures and plurilingualism . She published many publications. For example: in the Hong Kong University Press she wrote “The Autonomy and Language learning”. Also, she wrote a book entitled “Beyond Language Teaching: Towards Language Advising”. Edith Harding-Esch’s husband is an English Mathematician and they have two children. The family’s language is French but they only use English at work and studies. They themselves undergo the process of Bilingualism.Philip Riley is an English author and linguist. He taught in Universities in Finland and Malta before setting in France. He, now, works at CRAPEL at the university of Nancy. He has many published books on linguistics and language teaching. He married a Swedish-speaking Finn and they have three children. While the children were young they spoke English and Swedish at home and French at school. Thus, there is a strong connection between the authors’ life experience, philosophy and education on the one hand and writing “The Bilingual Family” on the other hand.

What question does this part answer?

COMMENTS:Sally Wagih

It is obvious that Pauwels takes the material of her book from both primary and secondary sources. Her reliance upon(use) authoritative sources makes her use books ,references, articles from educational journals and newspapers which is considered the raw material that researchers study and analyze .In fact, the previous sources are considered primary sources. For instance ,pauwels uses FASOLD,RAYPH THE SOCIOLINGUISTICS OF SOCIETY.OXFORD:BLACKWELL.(1984).and WOMEN AND WIFE:SOCIAL AND SEMANTIC SHIFTS IN ENGLISH (RE-WRITE). Besides, she gets support from reviews and critical studies which are secondary sources. For instance, Frank, francinew.(1989)language planning, language reform ,and language change, a review of guidelines for non –sexist usage . In Francine Frank and Paula Treichler,pp.105-36.She also uses unpublished essay, M.A. Applied linguistic programs. In addition, a review article : language, sex and gender and sexist language by McConnel Ginet, Sally. It is clear that the book is done by a remarkable accuracy and hard work .As she gets references from Spanish like Frank,Francine w(1985)EL GENERO GRAMATICAL Y LOS CAMBIOS SOCIALES ESPANOL ACTUAL. Being ahighly-cultured writer she even reads references against her ideas. For example,AN ANALYSIS OF CLASSIC ARGUMENTS AGAINST CHANGING SEXIST LANGUAGE. She aims to give her work credibility and to make an effective and successful book tackling the idea of sexism

This part needs re-writing. Go like this: the author use both primary and secondary sources. As for primary XX she uses YYY, for example.. As for second she uses YYY for example.

Opponents of non-sexist language see that the usage of alternatives as he/she or the neuter "person"are confusing ,cumbersome and offensive variants.As it is common in public discussions to take it for granted that the usage of the word 'man' to refer to humanity or any person whether male or female,is to engage in sexist language. They believe that the use of 'man' or 'he' to refer to male and to both males and females means that maleness is more fundamental than femaleness .They also support their argument by the story of Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis. Eve is the first woman,she is created from Adam's rib for the purpose of being his companion. The implication is that Adam is more fundamental than Eve .Furthermore, when Aristotle says "man is a rational being"he doesn't mean males only but he means humanity. This according to feminist argument reflects patriarchal dominance and so sexism. In the end ,opponents claim that gender, in any language, is just an expression of the affinity of understanding for logical divisions and hierarchies.Blaubergs noted that there is no evidence (existed that)(in) cultures using a sexist language had any more sex discrimination than those using a liberated language. Proponents of this view suggested that language is a trivial concern and feminists should spend their energies on more important forms of sexism e.g economic oppression of women ,or physical violence . They also see that there is no freedom of speech as the non-sexist guidelines were characterized as a form of censorship .Besides, they belive that the so-called sexist language is not sexist as using the masculine generics were not sexist because the user of the term do not have the sexist intentions Furthermore, change is too difficult and impractical .Thus, these arguments suggests that "changing sexist language would involve the rewriting of literary works ,the idioms of the language and even historical events".On the contrary , supporters of non-sexist language as Anne pauwels believe that non-sexist language has the potential to change the way people think about cultural norms and gender roles .They believe that the masculine is always preferable to the feminine. For example, when the sex of something is unknown it is always referred as'he' .In addition , they call for having gender-specific titles and gender specific pronouns. They recognize that "traditional language fails to reflect the presence of women in modern society.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE pay attention to grammar and spelling. I sense carelessness in writing.

COMMENTS:Muhammad Soliman

[Insert the charts in the draft]

As mentioned before any sounds of any language are classified into two categories consonants and vowels. The IPA symbols for the English consonants are:

Arabic equivalent English equivalent Symbol

INSERT SYMBOLS in the draft

symbols are merely all the sounds that can be found in English and most of its dialects.The third chapter deals with the consonants of English. It describes the techniques used to pronounce consonants correctly. It also notes the importance of consonants as it is the bones or the Skelton(rephrase) of English words giving them their basic shape (p24.ch.3).Moreover, all the dialects of English maintains the same techniques to produce consonants; they only differ in the techniques of vowels.O'Connor classifies the consonants into five categories: Friction consonants, stop consonants, nasal consonants, lateral consonants and Gliding consonants. The first category (Friction consonants)contains the sounds /f,v,s,z,h,θ,ð,ʒ/.For all of them the lungs push air through a narrow opening where it causes friction of various kind (pp.25 ch.3).Fortunately, the speakers of Arabic can easily manage to master these sounds. They only mispronounce /v, θ, ð/./v/ has the same technique used to articulate /f/.the only difference is that /f/ is voiceless and /v/ is voiced. Moreover, when /f/ and /v/ occur at the end of words, after a vowel, they have an effect on the length of the vowels. The vowels in the words ending in /f/ are a little bit(informal) shorter than the words ending in /v/.

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Vowels before /v/ are longer than /f/

Examples of /f/: family, for and feel./v/`s most common examples: very, visit, never, over, receive and have.

In addition to /v/, the speakers of Arabic also mispronounce /θ, ð/.The best way to articulate these sounds is imitating the way/s/ is articulated while modifying the technique to get / θ / and imitating /z/ to get / ð/. /θ/ is much more like /s/ and/ ð/ is like /z/.The difference between them is that /s/ is made with the tip and blade of the tongue close to the center of the alveolar ridge and makes strong friction, whereas /θ/ is made with the tongue tip near the upper teeth and makes less friction. The same goes with /z/ and / ð/.

Examples of /θ/are thank, thin, thing and three. / ð/`s most common examples are this, that, other, father and mother.The second category (stop consonants) contains the sounds /p, b, t, d, tʆ, d ʒ, k, g /...In stop consonants the breath is completely stopped at some point in the mouth, by the lips or tongue-tip or tongue-back, and then released with a slight explosion. The speakers of Arabic usually mispronounce /p, t, d, tʆ, dʒ /./p/causes the following sound to lose some of the voicing which it would otherwise have. For example, in pu:l pool the first part of the vowel /u:/ has no voice-it consists of breath flowing through the mouth which is in position for /u:/. In fact this is what happens for /h/…so that we may write this voiceless period like this phu:l, where the h represents a voiceless kind of /u:/.Try making this voiceless/u:/ by it self, it is rather like what you do when you blow out a light [pphpphpphph]. Now put the /p/ in front of it, still with no voice, only strong breath…It is very important that the period of breath (which is called aspiration) should be there each time. It is this aspiration which mainly separates /p/ from /b/… [Speakers of Arabic] must be very careful to form /p/ and /b/ with the lips, and to open the lips and allow the breath to explode out of the mouth. (39, 40, 41)/t/ is strong stop consonant (voiceless) and /d/ is a weak one (voiced). The strong stop /t/ is aspirated the same way as /p/ and this may be written in similar way,e.g t h u: too. Put the tongue tip on the very center of the alveolar ridge; be sure that only The very point of the tongue is in contact, not the blade; then allow the air to burst out with a voiceless vowel /u:/; do this several times before adding the normal voiced vowel and be sure that when you do add the /u:/ the voiceless period is still there. Do this several times and each time check the exact position of the tongue-tip and the aspiration…Then try the word twin, where the first part of /w/ comes out voiceless and tj:n where /j/ is also partly voiceless. /d/ is short and weak and never aspirated. (42, 43)Concerning /tʆ/and /dʒ/, as the phonetic symbols suggests, /tʆ/ and /dʒ/ are stop consonants of a special kind. The air is trapped as for all the stop consonants. But it is released with definite friction of the /ʆ/ and /ʒ/ kind. English children imitate a steam engine by a series of /tʆ/sounds. If u can listen to boiling oil in a fryer when touching little drops of water, you can listen to this sound /tʆ, tʆ, tʆ, tʆ/. Speakers of Arabic may not be able to distinguish between /tʆ/and /ʆ/, and between /dʒ/ and /ʒ/. These speakers must be careful to make definite stop before the friction for /tʆ/and /dʒ/, and no stop at all for /ʆ/and /ʒ/.Word Pronunciation/ʆ/ shoe / ʆu: //tʆ/ chew / ʆu: //ʆ/ washing / wɒʆɪŋ //tʆ/ watching / wɒtʆɪŋ //ʒ/ measure / memeʒə //dʒ/ major / meɪdʒə //ʒ/ leisure / leʒə //dʒ/ ledger / ledʒə /Difference between /tʆ/and /dʒ/Some of the common words containing /tʆ/ are: such, teach, touch and kitchen. /dʒ/`s common examples are bridge and edge.The third category is nasal consonants /m, n, ŋ/. Speakers of Arabic have problems articulating /ŋ/. It has the same tongue position as /g/, so start with /g/; hold this position with the mouth wide open. Notice that the tongue-tip is low in the mouth and that the back of the tongue is high. Hold this mouth position and at the same time start the humming noise that you get with /m/ and /n/. Be sure that the mouth position does not change, and that the tip of the tongue does not raise at all. Continue the sound for three seconds, watching closely, then stop and start again. At the end of the sound just let it die away into silence with no suggestion of /g/. The most important thing is to keep /n/ and / ŋ/ separate and not to confuse them.Word Pronunciation/n/ sin sɪn/ŋ/ sing sɪŋ/n/ ran ræn/ŋ/ rang ræŋ/n/ son sʌn/ŋ/ sung sʌŋMost common words containing /ŋ/ are: anger, thing and young.The fourth category is Lateral consonant. /l/ is formed laterally, that is, instead of the breath passing down the center of the mouth; it passes round the sides of an obstruction set up in the center. Speakers of Arabic can articulate this sound correctly as long as it is not in the final position of the word or not followed by a vowel (clear /l/). Speaker from the Arabian Gulf can easily articulate clear and dark forms of /l/. They have a similar sound to dark /l/. They use it in words like (galbi) (قلبى: جلبى). They can distinguish between /l/ in the beginning of (little) and at its end. It should be noted that dark /l/ is articulated only when it is in the final position of the word i.e. (well, people, all and girl) or when it is not followed by a vowel i.e. (self, old, help and else). Clear /l/ is used before vowels and at the beginning of words.The final category (gliding consonants) is the fifth one. It contains /j, w, r/. Speakers of Arabic should pay attention to /r/. They must not replace it with the Arabic equivalent (ر). They must try to learn it as a kind of a new sound. They should try to capture it from any songs, movies or audio book available to them. Before continuing analyzing this sound an example would be good to help you set up a special box for the English form of /r/; The French has a special version of /r/. They usually replace it by a friction sound with the back of the tongue close to the soft palate and uvula i.e. L`amor (لا موغ). Now you should know that every language has its version of /r/, so pay attention to the following technique to master the English version of /r/. Try approaching the English form of a /w/. Get the speech organs ready for /w/, and then curl the tongue-tip back until it is pointing at the hard palate (the front of the middle roof of the mouth). Now change smoothly and without friction to the following vowel, as in red. Be careful, not to mix it with the Arabic (ر) as in (raya – راية). Try to think of the English /r/ as a new sound altogether. General American speakers use /r/ and do not omit or skip it. On the other hand, speakers of R.P. only use it before vowels and never before consonants. Also at the beginning of words only, so words like learn, sort and farm do not contain /r/ i.e. /lɜ:n/ /sɔ:t/ /fɑ:m/.The fourth chapter deals with (consonant sequences) where two or three or four or even more consonants follow one another. A three-consonant sequence is seen in words like best man(best mæn) and fix this (f ɪks ðɪs). Also it is possible to combine four consonants as in next Sunday (nekst sʌndi) and big splash (bɪg splaʆ). The five-consonants` examples are mixed sweets (mɪkst swi:ts) and bent spring (bent skru:). The combination of six consonants is possible in words like next spring (nekst spriŋ) and he thinks straight (hi: tinks streit). Finally, there is a long combination of seven consonants like the sounds perceived from the following sentence: she tempts strangers(ʆi: tempts streindʒəz). Speakers of Arabic must pay attention to these sound sequences. They should pronounce them in harmony. Also they must pay attention not to insert any vowels between the sequences of consonants to shorten it.(The vowels of English) is focused on in the fifth chapter. O'Connor classifies vowels into simple vowels and diphthongs (a vowel sound made by pronouncing two vowels quickly one after the other. For example, the vowel sound in '[boy]' is a diphthong.)Longman dictionary of contemporary English, 3rd Edition. Vowels are made by a voiced air passing through different mouth-shapes; the differences in the shape of the mouth are caused by different positions of the tongue and the lips. It is easy to see and feel the lip differences, but it is very difficult to see or feel the tongue differences, and that is why a detailed description of the tongue position for a certain vowel does not really help us to pronounce it well. Vowels must be learned by listening and imitating. So spend some of your listening time on the vowels. Simple vowels can be easily mastered by the speakers of Arabic. /i:, ɪ, e/ are three sounds. A proper learner must not mix them up. Try to capture the difference between them in the following words-get back to the table of vowels and memorize the Arabic equivalent for each one of them-:/i:/ /ɪ/ /e/Word Pronunciation Word Pronunciation Word Pronunciationwheat wi:t wit wɪt wet wetcheek tʆi:k chick tʆɪk check tʆekreach ri:tʆ rich rɪtʆ wretch retʆlead li:d lid lɪd led ledAnother confusing set of short vowels is :/e, æ, ʌ/. Read the following chart and try to imitate the vowel sounds:/e/ / æ / / ʌ /Word Pronunciation Word Pronunciation Word Pronunciationbet bet bat bæt but bʌtpen pen pan pæn pun pʌnmesh mesh mash mæʆ mush mʌʆVowels like /ɑ:, ʌ, ɒ / must be kept separate though there might be a sort of similarities. /ɑ:/ is a long vowel. The short vowel /ɒ/ is a bit like /ɑ:/ in quality though of course they must be kept separate. For /ɒ/ the lips may be slightly rounded, for /ɑ:/ they are not. Try the following sets:/ ʌ / /ɑ:/ /ɒ/Word Pronunciation Word Pronunciation Word Pronunciationluck lʌk lark la:k lock l ɒ kcud kʌd card ca:d cod ɒduck dʌk dark da:k dock dɒkIt is important to note the slight differences between the following vowels:/ɒ/ /ɔ:/ /ʊ/ /u:/Word Pronunciation Word Pronunciation Word Pronunciation Word Pronunciationcod kɒd cord kɔ:d could kʊd cooed ku:dwad wɒd ward wa:d would wʊd wooed wu:d/ɑ:/, /ɜ:/The vowel /ɜ:/ as in her is a long vowel which is not very close in quality to any of the other vowels. The two commonest mistakes with /ɜ:/ are, first, to replace it by /er/, and second, and more important, it is replaced by /ɑ:/.In the first case there is no danger of misunderstanding though it will be strange. In the second case, there is danger of misunderstanding, since words like hurt and heart will be confused. The difference between /ɑ:/, /ɜ:/ can be perceived through the following chart/ɜ:/ /ɑ:/Word Pronunciation Word Pronunciationpurse pɜ:s pass pa:ssheard hɜ:d hard ha:dfirm fɜ:m farm fa:m/ə/One of the commonest vowels in English is /ə/ or (schwa). It is a short version of /ɜ:/. It is particularly short when it is not final, e.g. / əgen/ (again). In final position, as in /betər/ (better), the vowel sounds more like /ʌ/, though it is not usually so clear. It is so close to the sound perceived from the Arabic word (أرض).The second category of vowels is diphthongs. A diphthong is a glide from one vowel to another, and the whole glide acts like one of the long, simple vowels. The diphthongs of English are in three groups: those which end in /ʊ/, /əʊ/, /aʊ/, those which end in /eɪ, ɔɪ, aɪ/, and those which end in /ɪə, eə, əʊ/.

IMPORTANT: DON'T forget you're writing a book review. This means: you don't take large chunks of the Book. Please re-write this part and EMAIL it to me. Don't worry it shouldn't take time.

COMMENTS:Mahmoud Hamdy

Jackobson has a distinctive point of views(points of view is the plural form) that recently proved its validity (who proved their validity - you can't say X proves X's validity). He presents some laws, concerning the relation between sounds. The first law of solidarity states that the phonological system of the child contains primary values and secondary ones. The secondary value can not exist in the linguistic system without the primary value. And(delete) the primary value can not be eliminated without having a primary value. For instance, the acquisition of fricatives presupposes the acquisition of stops in child language. So the child tends to change fricative /f/ to the corresponding stop /p/. additionally, in Korean language(delete) there is no /f/ or /v/ sounds. The native speaker substitutes the fricatives /f/ or /v/ with the stop /p/.( Mahmoud 's experience, what do you mean). Also, the foreigner who learns korean language finds difficulty in differentiating between /m/ and /b/. He hears the phrase ( tell mo essip nie da " I have a question" ) as ( tell mon essim nie da). This is what is called the law of solidarity, in which the hearer is confused between two sounds ,he hears, because of the solidarity between sounds or phonological solidarity(rephrase: because of the phonological solidarity between sounds). And this takes us to the theory of the child's role in the change of language over time. Regarding this,(delete) other laws argue(state) that the acquisition of back consonants presupposes the acquisition of front ones. Accordingly, in the development of child language the back consonant /k/ emerges with the front consonant /t/ but later /k/ emerges as a separate phoneme. So there is a disturbance in the child language because of his (in)disability to differentiate between his back and front consonants, resulting in aphasia. Another example can be noted in the child's fluctuations between the liquids /r/ and /l/, /ƒ/ sounds and /s/ sound, and between fricative and stop sounds. For instance, there are some children who replace /s/ sound with / ƒ/. An Egyptian child frequently substitutes / s/ with / ƒ/. This also might contribute to the emergence of this sound / ƒ/ in different languages like German. Hence, the solidarity between the emergences of sounds occasionally results in aphasia. This aphasia can survive with the child or can be gradually fixed. Jackobson argues that the phonological laws of child language are not to be mechanically separated from the corresponding evidence of the languages of the world. He also believes that the appearance of single sounds must not be treated in isolated fashion without regard(rephrase) for their place in the sound system. Consequently, he has(delete) traced how the phonological system of a child is divided into consonants and vowels. According to scientists(give names), the babbling period involves neither consonants nor vowels. All the sounds of this period are the same. Notably, both classes of speech are fundamental. They are contrasted with each other as closure and opening. For example, the opening is achieved in the wide /a: / vowel, while the closure is achieved in stops and labials which obstruct the oral cavity. On the one hand, consonantal system consists of the sounds that obstruct the oral cavity during production or pronunciation. Unlike the vocalic system, which is characterized by the absence of the obstructed cavity. consonants are generally voiceless during the beginning stage of child language, whereas vowels are voiced . Jackobson says, "The syntagmatic relation arises in the child before the paradigmatic relation, and the contrast between consonant and vowel arises, of course, on the syntagmatic axis."

COMMENTS: reem mohamad abdel hamid raafat

Hi Dr.Khaled.First, I have some questions.1-How can I judge the style of the author being formal or informal?You should read about that. But I will give you some hints:
does the writer use [1] colloquial words?
[2] Is the style comversational?
[3] Does he/she give formal definitions of the terms used?
2-What is meant by primary or secondary sources?
Primary Sources: CHECK THIS LINK
Secondary Sources: CHECK THIS LINK
3-Is one book only enough to compare between it and my book?
YES.
4-Can I use internet sources?
Only if the source is
[1] part of an online journal,
[2] an academic page ending in .edu.
Second,I will look for MONA GAMAL and will tell her about your schedule at the faculty.THANK YOU.
Thank you.

COMMENTS:aya muhammed ashraf

“Language and gender” is written in a very appealing and informal way. In fact, this is quite suitable for the target readers, students, as well as other categories because it is simple and attractive. The whole book is written in a practical(use a more specific word) way that invigorates the mind. It analyzes every point step by step starting with defining it to giving examples from real life. Furthermore, it is full of maps and activities that help in illustrating the point as well as making it easier to understand. For example, in Unit one, the main subject was(is) that language is not a neutral reflection of the world but “by using language, we project onto the world our own sense of ‘reality’.” Throughout the whole unit the writer tries to prove this point of view by analyzing it and giving examples from the real world. First, he proved that different languages encode objects and ideas differently. One of the examples he gave is that in English, there is 11 basic words for colors whereas speakers of some New Guinea Highland languages have two terms only: dark and light. Then from this point, he moved to prove that we project humanness and gender onto the inanimate and animal worlds. The writer believes that “human beings are essentially very lonely and insecure creatures. For it seems that we need to constantly project the idea of humanness onto the inanimate world.” Thus “we make cartoons for children where objects like brooms and spoons talk and sing.” This reason is invalid. In fact it is quite the opposite. This shows the superiority of human beings over all other kinds: everything has to look like us. In addition, people like what is familiar to them not necessarily because they are insecure and lonely but because they want to draw themselves closer to other beings in an attempt to understand them. That is why cartoons have objects singing and talking. It is an attempt to make the children understand the world around them and at the same time it attracts them by showing them something familiar. Finally the writer succeeded in producing an interesting, funny book that attracts everyone who reads it.
COMMENTS: Very good and to the point.

COMMENTS:lina

The author's style is not only formal but also educational. He explains all the definitions he introduces, ensuring that the reader understands the complex topic of language employed in (as used by the) media. Undoubtedly, this topic is abstract and difficult to(for) non-expert readers to grasp. However, Lewis does not want to lose his readers when he provides a list of definitions of the terms in his introduction. Then he uses these terms throughout his book. He calls this list " Key concepts" which are : Language wars, the mediasphere, writing democracy/broadcast democracy, signs and signifiers, dissociating signifiers, intertextuality/supplementary, hyperreality/televised culture and cultural imaginary. The early pages of the book offers the reader the definitions of the terms used and the last pages also mentions all the references used by the author to write his book. The reference pages reaches ten pages, where books from western and eastern writers are selected as guides to Lewis. Books like Orientalism by Edward Said, Ramptons' Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq are samples of the collection used. Moreover, Lewis offers a variety of books as well as other resources including newspapers like Washington Post, websites and thesises. To be credible, Lewis uses both primary and secondary resources to defend his view. In the reference pages, Lewis openly shows that he consulted several resources about the views concerning media making, politics, Muslims, Islam, and books about Islam written by both Eastern and Western writers. Resources like the following are included: Don't Shoot the Messenger, Stupid White Men, The state of Terror, Islam Encountering Globalization, The mind of our enemies, and several others. The references can be tracked easily and be checked for accuracy, which gain the trust of the reader as authentic and available to people. The readers can further read about language wars, using the rich reference pages.The writer's consistency in clarifying the topic continues with his use of two methods: diagrams and chapter conclusions. He uses a diagram in his introduction about the media triangle. This figure connects the text, producer of the text, and the audience. Since media as a term is very abstract, Lewis uses the diagram to visualize the relationship between the text and context. This piece of information is one of the basis(bases) Lewis uses to freely start discussing his topic after establishing a common knowledge between him and the reader. Secondly, Lewis ends all the chapters of his book with a chapter-conclusion page that has numbered points, summarizing the important ideas discussed in the chapter. This page shows how Lewis is keen on making his messages clear to his readers and even memorable. The two methods of diagrams and chapter conclusions give an educational nature to the book and makes it reader-friendly.
COMMENTS: Very good

COMMENTS: lina

The organization of the table of contents is clear and gradual. It starts with an introduction that extends to nineteen pages, followed by the headlines of the topics discussed in the book. The introduction starts with explaining the relation between terrorism and language wars, pointing out the idea of the mediation of terror. Immediately in the first chapter of the book, Lewis discusses in details(in detail) the mediated terror and has it as the title of his chapter: " Mediated terror and the Politics of Representation." Lewis keeps this pattern of introducing the topics in the introduction and deeply clarifies his position on these issues. He mentions the relation between culture and the political signifier as a concept then chronologically discusses the details in the second chapter " Conflict and Culture: Civilization, History, Identity." Similarly, his third chapter was generally mentioned in the introduction ; the connections between politics, globalization and the media sphere. It comes(It is) no surprise to see that the next chapter titled as(delete this word) " The Meaning of 9/11: In the Midst of Infinite Justice." Finally, the conclusion is highlighted in the table of contents reads as(delete) " Conclusion: Cultural Democracy, Difference and the End of Civilization," preparing the reader for a wrap up to (of) the dense reading experience provided by Lewis. The clarity and organization of the topics are a great encouragement to read the book out of looking at the table of content.
COMMENTS: Very good. It looks like, you guys are more creative when you're not afraid or scared of writing with self-confidence.

COMMENTS: Lina Samir

It takes few seconds to realize the powerful messages this book is about to send when the reader sees its title " Language Wars" by Jeff Lewis. The subtitle even makes the messages clearer as it specifies the scope of the topic saying " The Role of Media and Culture in Global Terror and Political Violence." The writer, by mentioning the subtitle, is promising (intends) to focus his research on language wars in the media and its effects. The cover of the book has two photos: one was taken when New York authorities realized (do you mean 'released') 9/11 transcripts in August 2003, and the second photo is of journalists document a mock chemical attack in Kuwait city at December 2002. Clearly, the cover is part of the statements that are made by the author in his book. The two photos are showing the making of the news other than reporting the events. The title, subtitle and the cover are preparing the reader for an extraordinary experience in wars of the media.

COMMENTS: Very good and creative. But you forgot to mention the Preface and Table of Contents.

COMMENTS: reem mohamad abdel hamid raafat

The title of the book "Psycholinguistics"directly represents the material of the book.It is a short,clear and precise that can be understood by the readers(TAKE this out).The contents list is simple as it shows the reader how the book is divided into four sections and the information tackled in every section.The book includes two prefaces.The first preface is written by the Series Editor H.G. Widdowson and the second is by the Author Thomas Scovel.In his preface,Widdowson mentions about the purpose of the book(TAKE this out). (According to the author's preface), the first (main) purpose of the book is to help linguistic scholars (linguists) as well as others who are only interested in this field to know more about this branch.This purpose can be illustrated by the transitional????? texts which will ease people into an understanding of complex ideas.Widdowson says"This series of introduction is designed to serve this need.Another purpose of the book is to act as a large_scale view of language.The design of the book is also discussed in his preface in away that enables the reader to know how the book tackles its ideas.The book is designed to start by the survey which explains the ideas in a simple and easy language that con be easily understood.Next to the survey comes the readings given by the author to the reader in order to come closer to the material,its idioms and other books discussing the same field.Then,the references section which paves the way for the reader to know more about this branch.Finally,the glossary section is mentioned and it is cross_referenced to the survey and it introduces the reader to know more information about the terms used in the book.The design pf the book reflects its purpose as it a clear and simple design that can be read by different people.Widdowson declares that that the four sections combine together to give a complete information about the ideas o the book.Every reader can use any of the four sections separately according to his own interest.The second preface is written by the Author Thomas Scovel in which he declares his responsibility for any kind of omission and commission in the book.Then,he pays special thanks to his wife and all people who supported him in his work.The preface of the author did not add anything important to the reader.(TAKE this out) COMMENTS: Reem, try to avoid redundancy and to get to the point with as few words as possible.

COMMENTS: Mahmoud Hamdy Ahmed

Child Language Aphasia and Phonological Universals" Kindersprache" is one of the most representatives of Roman Jacobson's writings. The book provides a detailed explanation of phonological typology and the problems of language acquisition and phonemic regression. Child language aphasia imminently is the problems that confront the child in his early stages of language acquisition. The study of such branch of linguistics mainly paves the way to the gradual emergence of universal interest in such field which daily proves its importance in diagnosing and fixing many phonological disorders in child language and sometimes in the language of the adult. Consequently, the writer focuses on these problems in order to provide the convenient solution for them. Thus, Phonological universals are the sound changes, shared by different spoken communities. Try to break the following sentence into smaller ones. You can start with something like "In his book, Jackobson stresses three/four/five etc.. main points. The first point ...The second point ...etc" In this book, Jackobson mainly stresses on (delete) the phonological development of child language, starting from the early trials of sounds emergence (emmergence of sounds) till the complete acquisition of language, moving to the stratification of phonological system which is divided into relative and absolute chronology of phonological development and the identical laws of solidarity in the phonological development, and finally, the foundation of the structural laws which unconsciously control child phonological development in his journey to acquire language. Jackobson deliberately instigates the process of phonological development of child language in order to show many factors, involved in such process. First, Romanticism stressed the creativity of the child, whereas Wundt and Meringer sought to prove that the intellectual and linguistic activity of the child is merely a kind of imitation. Both points of views are correct(valid) because the child instinctively creates as he borrows. In other words, child acquisition of language is not a strict imitation but the process of selection which it follows, is the creative part .for instance, a kind of sound- change occasionally happens in child language. Children who do not possess any R- sound often pronounce the sequence (vowel +r) as lengthening of the vowel. In Russian, the child pronounces the word (marka As māka). Also, according to Alexandrov's observation of a two-years old Russian child, the sound /k/(see comment 2 below) is often replaced by t ,and g is regularly replaced by k such as (as in) (ogon which is pronounced as akan) . additionally, an English girl , as sully reports, used to avoid the use of (y).she pronounced yes as esh .she used the same sound regularly as a substitute for L . therefore, she said yook for look .hence, the child may contain elements which remain foreign to his/her language. Furthermore, the great Genevan scholar characterizes the "particularist spirit" and the "unifying force" which not only affects the child language directed to the adult, but also affects the language of the adult directed to the child, as the most important factors in child's acquisition of language. Thus, one talks in child-fashion to the child , and attempts to imitate his phonological, lexical , and grammatical peculiarities in speech. Infantile instinct occasionally appears in adult life, as psychoanalysis has stressed. For example, the two-courting lovers frequently talks in child language, claiming the matter of convention. Their infantile-language is sometimes used through replacing the liquids R and L With j . Hence, the child is both an imitator who himself is imitated. consequently, the phonological changes in language properly result from the adaptation of the old generation to the language of children which may involve in the historical development of the languages of the world. This also depends upon the readiness of linguistic system for such mutat. Worthy of mentioning is that researches have also established that nearly all mutilations of ordinary language observed in children have close parallels with the sound changes of different languages of the world. for example, one may claim that the British dialect is a kind of change in the phonological level, caused by children. in British English ( vowel +r) is pronounced through lengthening the vowel without pronouncing the liquid R such as the word (car) is pronounced as (ka:) . Another example, in the American dialect, the alveolar(T) is pronounced as (d), which might back to the child language which intermingle between the voiced (d) and the voiceless(t).thus, child language might be a major agent in the mutilation of the phonological system of the languages of the world.Jackobson intensively stresses the beginnings in the child's journey of the acquisition of language .Jackobson regards the efforts and success , accomplished by the Belgian linguist ,Antoine Gregoire, who skillfully witnessed the emergence of the linguistic structure in child's beginnings in acquiring language through his rigorous system to live moment by moment in the society of infants. according to many researches , concerning that field, a fixed order must be inherent in language acquisition. In other words, there are some principles, involved in such process of acquiring language. First, Fritz argued that the least effort principle(define) is required first by children in their linguistic production. But this hypothesis is completely refuted by child's linguistic development and the hypothesis of the arbitrary nature of the criteria for determining the degree of the effort required for producing the sound. Moreover, the actual beginning stages in language acquisition starts with the babbling period in which there is an apathy of articulating sounds. The child is able to produce sounds of any place of articulation palatalized and rounded consonants, sibilants, affricates..etc. As Gregoire stated " in the babbling period, the child is capable of producing all conceivable sounds". Surprisingly, the child nearly loses his ability to produce sound in passing over from the pre-language period to his first acquisition of language. And the sounds that are strange to the child's mother language begin to gradually vanish from his inventory. Secondly, the acoustic impression of the child plays a vital role in his acquisition of language. It is proved that the child is completely aware of the sounds he hears, although he can not pronounce these sounds. For instance, the Serbian linguist Pavlovic argued that his one-years old son could faultlessly distinguish the words tata and kaka when spoken to him ,but consistently said tata instead of kaka. There are two styles of language for the child, one he controls actively, the other of the adult, only passively. In other words, the child speaks one language and understands the other one. For example, a French girl said "tosson" for both garçon and coshon, but she repeatedly protested when someone called a boy a coshon and a pig a garçon. Hence, the child can not produce some sounds , and frequently generalizes a sound for another sound. Notwithstanding, the child 's inability to produce sounds, his desire for communication plays an important role in his frequent trials to speak. These trials are represented in his egocentric soliloquy which witnesses the emergence of speech sounds. In this transitional period, the child is a very talented imitator who adapts himself to the sounds , he hears, effectively trying to imitate the speaker by reacting to whispering by whispering , and with the raising or lowering of the voice with similar raising or lowering in ?. Also he tries to retain and reproduce the sounds that he lose in his babbling period.Moreover, interjectional sounds have nothing to do with the sound's selection of the child. In other words, exclamation and onomatopoetic formations take no account of this selection. Indeed, the child is unable to produce some sounds of ordinary speech, while he can imitate some sounds which include this sound. For example, child expresses pleasure by producing the sound Ga Ga , although his original language does not have the velar phoneme or he can not produce this sound in normal speech, and fricatives are often replaced by stops in the " objective denoting language". The liquid r can still be lacking in the words which the child borrows from the adults , but he efficiently produce s such liquid when he imitates the sound of the bird , (start a new sentence)and children who do not make use of I , imitate the barking of the dog didi. Finally, an onomatopoetic sound can prepare and facilitate the emergence of the corresponding phoneme, although this incidental vocal gestures do not need to be part of the child's vocabulary. Many phoneticians have tried so hard to find a regular order of phonological development of child language. Unfortunately, there is no absolute right(correct) order of phonological development. If a law is dedicated(established), there will be some oppositions. For example, Shultz argued that O and Y belong to the child's latest phonological acquisition, whereas Preyer's reference to the very early pre-language proves the appearance of rounded palatal vowels during the babbling period, which weakened the observation of Schultz. In the language of the son of Gregoire (Gregoire's son), the vowels O and Y were being lacked(lacking) until the end of his second year, whereas he spontaneously produced babbling sounds of similar articulation in the middle of his first year. Hence, there is no order in the phonological development of the child who unconsciously has the ability to produce many sounds during the babbling period but he gradually looses the ability to produce the same sounds in the stages of language acquisition. Dissolution of the phonological system in child language is the third stage after acquiring many different and various sounds. The child is as a play or a story which has beginning , rising actions ,climax, and falling actions and resolution. As the preceding words have explained that the child acquires language instinctively by its arbitrary and natural meanings ,but he reaches the climax of his journey to acquire language in which he unwillingly witnesses the dissolution of his phonological system and aphasic speech disturbances. In (on) one hand, in the aphasic speech disturbances neither the articulatory nor the auditory organs are injured, but the most important factor for children who are learning their language is not the ability to produce or perceive a particular sound , but the distinctive linguistic value of the sound in question. In other words, the most important way is to acquire the ability to distinguish functionally significant sounds. In some cases, children are able to produce sounds in question, and often preserve them in sound gestures, but unfortunately their distinctive phonemic value is lost. Consequently, the sound disappears without being replaced, resulting in aphasia. For example, the loss of the Czech phoneme R makes the distinction between R and Ø very difficult. Also, the distinction between R and L is lost so that either R falls together with l( hrad "city" > hlad ), or R and L function as free variants ( hrad "city" as well as hlad "hunger" can be pronounced by aphasics with either r or L ). Further more (furthermore), the same phenomena(phenomenon) happens in Arabic. For example, the child can not differentiate between k and t in his phonological system and phonemic level. He replaces k with t so he says ( Talb for Kalb ),despite the fact that he deliberately critics(criticizes) you if you substitute both (the two sounds) sounds with each other.Moreover, the child reaches that stage of what can be called sound-meaning disturbances in which the child is unable to differentiate between words and its meanings. According to transformational generative grammar, meaning is the weakest unit in the word, and sound is the strongest unit in it. On the other hand, K.(delete) Goldstein argues that there is no distinction between words and sounds. Phonemes and words are firmly related to achieve the function of the language.(vague, rephrase it) Meanwhile, every word has its own grammatical form and constant meaning(Do you mean, word meaning does not change? Which is not true.), and phoneme performs(check a dictionary to see how this verb is used) only to distinguish between meanings.(not accurate, rephrase) For example, in English, the word (breath) has two pronunciations or phonemic forms. If the word is used as a verb , it should be pronounced as (bri:θ), whereas, if it is used as a noun , it should be pronounced as(briθ) this what is called(paronyms) or phonologically similar words. . Also the aphasics' inability to distinguish the liquids L and R in( lippe and rippe) is another aspect of sound-meaning disturbances. words could be comprehended since the child's meaning comprehension is preserved. But if his phoneme comprehension is damaged, he will mix(another verb) between words. Hence, meanings and phonemes are easily associated , and mainly result in aphasia for children and patients. Both sound and meaning disturbances, therefore, result in the expansion of homonym. in other words, the phonological unit corresponds to a multiplicity of interlinked meanings, resulting in homophony. The more extensive the sound disturbance, the more difficult the distinguish(use the noun) of words is. Indeed, every aphasic disturbance is characterized with the loss of some linguistic value. An analogy can be drawn between both aphasic sound -deafness and sound-muteness. Both phenomena are linguistically problems. Sound- deafness is argued (who argues) to be "sensory aphasia". Pierre Marie explains that this problem does not have its roots in the acoustic apparatus but rather in the "semiotic sphere" or ( the intellectual deficiency relating specifically to language). For instance, a Chinese child can not differentiate between the liquids (r and L), Arabic speaker can not distinguish between the English sound ( θ and s) . Notably, it can be argued that the Chinese can successfully imitate the liquid (r), which is not found in his language. But ,in the same time , he exerts much effort to do and preserve that sound. So do the Arab speaker who finds difficulty in producing the sound (θ). Hence, what is more difficult to the foreigner is not to grasp the sound but to use it correctly.On the other hand, aphemic disorders or sound -muteness is relatively related to sound –deafness. In other word, the production of a sound is a goal-directed activity, in which the sound may be felt strange or foreign to be imitated by the speaker . This dual-fate sound is either preserved in special situation ,or avoided in normal unaffected speech. This sound-dumbness can be disappeared(disappear is an intransitive verb) in the existence of correction(rephrase), but it reappears with its absence(what do you mean), returning to the speaker's usual sound poverty. For example, one-and- a half year old English girl constantly says (mudder instead of mother) but under correction ,she pronounces it correctly. Unfortunately, she backs(find another verb, check dictionary) to her state of sound-poverty. Also any English- Egyptian(rephrase) learner tends to pronounce the sound (θ) correctly under supervision. (I STOP HERE) But he unconsciously backs to his sound poverty state, in which his dialect does not contain this sound. Accordingly, sound dumbness mainly depends upon the speaker's possession of sound- productivity, in which sound-deafness plays a major role.The phonological system of any language consists of many related stratifications which directly affect the daily use of language in a particular spoken community. indeed, Jacobson interestingly tackles these stratifications in several points. Imminently, the phonological system of the child is frequently hindered by many different factors which gradually result in aphasia. According to Gutzmann's Berlin experience "almost half of the children just starting school, who are about six years old, do not have normal pronunciation". At first, child's phonological development has two orders, the relative and absolute chronology. Regardless of the different languages, the relative chronological order of phonological acquisition remains at all time and everywhere the same. For example, in many different languages that belong to many different cultures and countries, children tend to substitute T for K . in English, as Axel Kock has observed, children say " tut" for " cut ", also in German, children says "topf " for "Kopf ". Hence, it is believed that velar stops are acquired shortly after dental sounds. Also , it is believed that palatovelar sounds develop in child language after dental sounds. Consequently, the child tends to replace all velars with corresponding dental until his sixth year in which he intentionally exerts an invincible effort to distinguish between them. Any language consists of two categories of sounds, consonants and vowels, that mainly contribute in the foundation of child phonological system. It has been stated that child , in his early stages of language acquisition , is able to produce all sounds that may not belong to his language . in other words, he speaks neither English nor German . the child possesses in the beginning only those sounds which are common to all languages , while these phonemes which distinguish his mother language from the languages of the world are acquired later . Vowels are acquired stealthily by the child in his babbling period. In other words, the child tends to produce sounds that have no meaningful existence. For instance, child pronounces the vowel "a " during his babbling period, although his phonemic system has not completed. After a short time, the child opposes the wide vowel "a" with a narrower vowel "I" ( papa- pipi ). Child tends to use the wide vowel "a" after labials, whereas he usually uses " I " after dentals. This can be exemplified in one-year- old Czech girl who frequently uses (e and I ) after dentals, and consistently uses the vowels (a and u ) after labials. On the other hand, the consonantal system of the child begins with the emergence of labials. For example, the words " papa and mama" are of the first words to be pronounced by the child, who gradually follows them with nasal and oral stops ( papa- tata and mama- nana) . many children are not able to produce a labial sound before a front vowel (Feyeux 281). Therefore, the minimal vocalic system and minimal consonantal system of child are characterized by the presence of phonemes which combine two distinctive qualities. In the minimal vocalic system , ( u ) is a narrow vowel compared to ( a ) and velar or rounded compared to ( I ) . also in the minimal consonantal system which contain M ,P , and t, P is oral in opposition to the nasal ( M ) and at the same time labial in opposition to the dental ( T ) . . COMMENTS: 1. Try to use shorter sentences whenevery possible. 2. When you rever to a given sound, make sure that you write it in some kind of phonetic representation instead of using the letter. For example, when you refer to the sound t, write it /t/, so I know it is the sound. This makes it more technical. 3. Make sure that you define all your terminology. Do not assume that your reader has your same background and knowledge of the topic. Be nice to the reader!

COMMENTS: Sally Wagih Ali Hassan

"Women changing language"is a book written by Anne pauwels.It is first published in the united states of America by Addison wesley longman Inc,NewYork in 1998.Anne pauwels is a professor of linguistics, Dean of the facualty of Arts, humanities and social sciences. Her research interests and expertise draw upon two areas of sociolinguistics,the first is about language in contact and linguistic diversity and the second is about language and gender which is crystalized in this book.Actually (<-- TAKE THIS PART OUT). The title of Anne Pauwels book "WOMEN CHANGING LANGUAGE"reflects a feminist perspective.Anne pauwels has a challenging attitude as she seeks to eliminate gender discrimination and calls for the equal treatment of women and men in all spheres of life even in language.This book tackles sexism in language and how sexes are in an unequal status.It also sheds light on the feminist impact on language and the role of women as makers of meaning.In fact, the book begins with a comprehensive introduction about the bias concerns the portrayal of men as the norm and women as the appendage. This phenomenon is called linguistic sexism. It also includes the description and the discussion of feminist language reform from a language planning perspective.It reveals women as activists and as language planners proposing as well as implementing changes. Women's subordination in society and that there is a link between women's subordinate status in society and the androcentrism in language.(INCOMPLETE) The book also includes a well-structured table of content.It begins with a publisher's acknowledgements,author's acknowledgements where the author presents her gratitude to her colleagues,friends and feminist organisations who have provided her with the inspiration for this book.She also thanks the editors who commented on the book.(NOT IMPORTANT) The book is divided into seven books ordered chronologically.Firstly, It starts with informing the reader about language planning,how is language is planned and who are language planners are.Secondly,she tackles how sexism works in language.Thirdly,pauwels asked should sexist language be changed and elaborates its answer perfectly.Fourthly,the author presents the way in which sexist language should/may/could be changed.Fifthly,Pauwels implements non- sexist language change.Then she makes evaluation of(evaluates) feminist language change.Finally,she asked a question is the change occured or not? Moreover,There are concluding remarks,appendix,bibliography,author index,in addition to subject index to smplify the method of understanding.There is no doubt that(AVOID using this type of assertive phrases) Pauwels succeeded in presenting her point of view to convince the reader with feminst(SPELLING) language reform to reach the elimination of sexism in language Sally: In addition to the comments in red, make sure that tenses in the review are consistent. Usually the present is used in reviews. Whatever the tense is, be consistent.

COMMENTS: radwa saied ismaiel moh

"The Bilingual Family" is the second edition of Cambridge University Press' best-selling book that gives parents the information and the advice they need,in order to make informed decisions about what language 'policy' to adopt with their children.It also looks at(examines) cases of single-parent families with bilingual children,as well as schooling and bi-literacy issues.The title of the book "The Bilingual Family,a handbook for parents" crystallizes the fact that this book provides practical advice to thousands of parents who want their children to grow up as bilinguals.The book begins with a 'dedication' written by the authors to a number of bilingual children and to their parents.This gives the book some sort of credibility;as it addresses real bilingual families and explores their real problems concerning 'Bilingualsm' and how to face it.Following the dedication,comes. <--(TAKE THIS PART OUT) 'The Table of Contents' is well-divided.It is divided into three main parts.In the first,the authors,Edith Harding-Esch & Philip Riley,help parents identify the factors that will influence their decision whether to bring up their children as bilinguals or not.The second part consists of case studies of real bilingual families,which illustrate a wide range of different 'solutions'.The third part is an alphabatical referance guide providing answers to the most frequently asked questions concerning bilingualism."It is a very book and a reassuring one which is of great interest to parents",as said in the Modern Language Journal about this book.Then comes 'The Authors'.The authors,Edith Harding-Esch and Philip Riley,who are professional applied linguists,draw on their own experience as parents of successfully bilingual children who experienced this process themselves and on interviews with other bilingual families.After that comes 'The Preface'.It shows the main aim and target of the book.The book is particularly written for parents who might consider bringing up their children as bilinguals.It is written for those families who are speaking a language but are living in another country speaking another language.For ex.,"the English speaking family living in Madrid"(preface-xiii).The book,as well, could be useful to the wide range of increasingly mobile families who are encountered with (face) the problem of educating their children in two or more languages.Actually,the preface highlights the fact thet the book is not a set of harsh and hard rules to follow but it is a practical discussion of some of the fundamental aspects that will greatly help parents.It also shows that the book starts with a breif(CHECK SPELLING) presentation of the uses which all children;whether they are bilingual or not,put language(NOT CLEAR).Also,it begins with a definition of a small number of terms that are helpful to talk about,such as:language and language acquisation(CHECK SPELLING)).Actually,bringing up bilingual children is a challange and this book is an essential one that helps parents meet their challange(CHECK SPELLING). Radwa: This part is informative and provides a good overview of the book. However, it is a little bit repetitive. Also try to find a better way for exposition than using 'then comes .. then comes'. Also make sure you double check your review for spelling mistakes and typos.