Brown, Adam

English Language Myths

The aim of the book is to dispel beliefs aboutEnglish which are held by English teachers in Singapore, Southeast Asia andbeyond. These beliefs are either wide of the mark or stated too strongly.However, they are widely held, and thus are taught in schools and in exercisebooks, and appear in tests and examinations. The 30 chapters (corresponding to30 myths examined) cover the nature and status of English, grammar, morphology,pragmatics, spelling and pronunciation. The approach adopted shows that many ofthe beliefs held by teachers are not substantiated by what speakers of Englishactually do. Quotations from literature, reference books and from corpus dataare given to support the analysis. The author is an authoritative figure in hisfield, and has many years of experience in training English language teachers inSoutheast Asian countries. The discussions that focus on Southeast Asia andSingapore in particular make this book very relevant to both English languageteachers and students in the region.