Reviews for Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases

The average rating for Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-05-24 00:00:00 Kenneth Warner McCarthy's text is now nearly thirty years old, and yet it feels fresh and, most importantly, vital. I'm currently studying for a masters degree in Applied Linguistics and this was one of the books recommended for our unit on Discourse Analysis - so I decided to read it from cover to cover to see what I might learn. And I learnt a huge amount, both of a theoretical nature (such as the relationship between theme and rheme) and of a more practical, teachable nature (such as the idea of back-channel speech - expressions like 'Oh?' and 'Uh-huh' that punctuate the discourse of an active listener - and how important it can be for to keep this aspect of discourse in mind when you want to carry on a conversation in the same way a native speaker might). Fully recommended.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-02-03 00:00:00 Victoria Dunn This book contains plenty of theoretical information on (foreign) language teaching with many examples from different languages. It was easily understandable and while I didn't enjoy reading it all the time, it was a good educational experience. I read this book as part of a course on pragmatics in university during my Master's degree. I recommend this book to all language teachers, but in particular to beginners like me.