Getting Started. Describing the grammar of speech and writing

The main focus of this book is how spoken and written English differs. You are introduced to some basic grammatical structures such as clauses and phrases and you compare how they function in speech and writing. Another key skill which is introduced in this book is the use of electronic databases (corpora). This book continues to explore how English grammar varies, focusing in particular on its use in the media, academic writing and fiction. Through a mix of readings and hands-on activities a wide range of texts are investigated. In particular this section enables you to systematically interpret the meanings made by these texts showing how grammar creates different kinds of social relationships and represents social reality in different ways depending on factors such as who we are communicating with and what our agendas are