Speaking and Writing Well: Empowering Yourself With "Proper" English--Your Dynamite Guide to Conquering the World - Softcover

Alba, Kathy

9780970990907: Speaking and Writing Well: Empowering Yourself With "Proper" English--Your Dynamite Guide to Conquering the World

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0970990901 ISBN 13: 9780970990907

Publisher: Thatch Tree Pubns, 2001

A wacky but authoritative self-help guide to improving your English language skills for speaking and writing. Funny, caring, and unbelievably easy to understand, Dr. Kathy Alba, the author, becomes a trusted friend as she shows you how to speak and write correctly for success in the world beyond "back home"--places in society where Standard (educated) English is expected or even required. The book's sole purpose is to make you, the reader, look good.

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From the Publisher:

If you’re like most people, you may feel insecure when speaking or writing. Certainly you want to make a great impression, but you wonder "Am I making errors that I don’t know about but that other people notice? Is that why they wince (or privately laugh with disrespect) when they’re listening to me or reading anything I’ve written? Do I break so many language rules that I sound dumb?"

Dr. Kathy Alba’s remarkable new book makes educated-sounding English easy to learn and increases your speaking and writing skills without pain. The knowledge you gain builds your confidence and gives you the assurance that comes from knowing you’re correct in what you say or write. And best of all, Kathy’s zany sense of humor and offbeat photography make you laugh while learning concepts you’d normally expect to give you headaches or hives. Experiencing this delightful book can change your life.

Here are a few examples of ways you’ll learn to sizzle your English: —Is it correct to say "Yesterday I come home and stacked marbles in the freezer"? How about "Last September I seen water lilies sprouting on the football field"? Or "Every Tuesday for the past six months I have ran circles around the pop machine at the 7-11"? —Is it "Yesterday Angela laid in the sun" or "She lay in the sun"? —How about "That empty gum wrapper infers that your mouth is happy" or "It implies that it is"? —"The media is responsible for Harrison Ford’s dimples," or should it be "The media are responsible for them"? "The data is ancient" or "The data are ancient"? —Discover how to use "whom" like a college professor and whether "themself" (as in "Did the server at the Pizza Hut introduce themself?") is a word. —Get solid on whether a comma should appear before the word "and" in the sentence: "Bullfrogs sit on lily pads, and croak during the Superbowl." The question of whether to use or not use a comma in front of "and" (or "but") is the most misunderstood and frequently messed up concept in English today. —Find out which answer is correct in the phrase, "Those (1) gremlins (2) gremlin’s (3) gremlins’ bellies craved dog biscuits right after midnight." —When you answer the phone, should you say "This is her" or "This is she"? Is it correct to say "It is I" or "It’s me"? Find out why so many of the old grammar seem so weird to our modern ears.

Speaking and Writing Well can make each of these points and scads of others perfectly clear in your mind so that other people may start looking to you as the local language expert. A copy of the book on your desk at work can be an indispensable tool for making you, your boss, and your company shine with professional brilliance. And Dr. Kathy’s Grammar Emergency Hot Line—a month of free service that comes with purchase of the book—will help dig you out of those English problems you can’t seem to solve.

The bottom line is this: you deserve to be honored for your excellence. This fun book will show you how.

About the Author:

Kathy Alba, a native of Los Angeles, received her B.A. summa cum laude in English (with minors in psychology and French) from Oregon State University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in English and linguistics from the University of North Carolina.

One of Kathy’s main professional focuses is her teaching, having been an award-winning adjunct professor of English in several colleges and universities across Kansas for some seventeen years. She speaks with authority but always with passion and the belief that only humor can make learning into an adventure rather than a pain in the neck, that if you’re laughing, you’ll probably be relaxed enough to understand and take in new, even complex ideas. In response to the needs of her students and people in the larger community, she has written this off-the-wall book on "empowered" English and another on study skills. As director of Bear Hollow Educational Systems—a nationwide seminar series designed for corporations, college campuses, and city groups—she speaks with compassion and uses the book to inspire, nurture, and help people move closer to their personal fulfillment.

Her other primary focus is writing. Concertos in D Major, a relationship novel about a lovely violinist on the wild north coast of Oregon, may be ordered from Amazon.com or bookstores now. Another one, Releasing Hatshepsut, follows a photojournalist to an archaeological dig in Egypt and an even greater dig into her own soul. Still another, Morgan’s Summit, details self-discovery and an opening of the heart during a rock climbing adventure on Mt. Whitney in the southern Sierra. Beyond these, Kathy’s major work is a seven volume epic exploring the meaning of life and apocalypse through both comedy and pain, romance and supernatural incident, entitled Across the Soul’s Boundary. This life-changing series will start reaching you early next year.

While admittedly an adrenaline-challenged non-athlete, Kathy is passionate about researching the details of her books in bizarre ways if necessary—including rock climbing, white-water rafting, kayaking, sailing (in gale winds), combing European capitols along with the ruins of Greece, Jordan, Israel and Egypt and humiliating herself on the back of a camel—because such adventures force her, ready or not, to grow beyond her natural state of self-avowed wimp-hood.

Kathy is also founder and chief artist of both Bear Hollow Art Works, a studio that makes stained glass and hand-dressed teddy bears, and Frills and Furbelows by Kathy Alba, a line of originally designed hand-crocheted and knitted Victorian ladies’ fashions, heirloom wedding outfits, and vintage accessories.

She currently resides at ivy-covered Bear Hollow in Wichita, Kansas with her husband, several beloved dogs and uncountable stuffed bears. Her son is a medical student and classical violinist.

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