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Master American English and communicate with confidence

As an experienced student of English, you know the language can be a tricky one to learn with its complex grammar and its many "exceptions to the rule" rules.

Written by ESL guru Mark Lester--author of Grammar and Usage in the Classroom--this authoritative reference unravels these mysteries so you can take your English-language skills to the next level. You'll gain the confidence to speak English in any setting: in the workplace, at school, in social situations, and at home.

Master those troublesome subjects that baffle even native speakers of English:
articles * determiners * predicate adjective complements * post-noun modifiers * conjunctions * word order * verb tenses * modals * noun clauses

Customer Reviews (3)

yet another terrific book by Mark Lester, Ph.D.
ESL grammar is quite different from the traditional English grammar that Americans get--it uses different terminology, covers different subjects, and it is much more thorough.This becomes evident quickly when nonnative speakers ask native speakers grammar questions about determiners or phrasal verbs, for example.This book covers all the important subjects in detail, and it would be very good for intermediate/advanced ESL students as well as ESL tutors who need a quick reference guide with concise and clear explanations.The Introductions says "This book is for nonnative speakers of English who have already attained extensive fluency is classroom English. It is designed to help you move to the next level of functioning comfortably in a fully English-speaking environment . . . . The most important feature of this book is the immense amount of information about English grammar in general and about four specific areas of English grammar that are mostly likely to cause difficulties:
*Areas of unusual grammatical complexity.
*Areas of unusual irregularity.
*Areas in which native speakers routinely use special forms in conversational English.
*Areas in which both native and nonnative speakers of English often make mistakes."The book is divided into three sections: Noun Phrases, Verb Phrases, and Sentences.Like his other books, this one reads well, the explanations are in depth and clear, and there are hundreds of sample sentences to clarify the concepts.(The tone isn't as zaney as his previous books--no example sentences about Senator Fogg or the Seven Dwarves here, sorry.)Lester packs a lot in these 340+ pages.I keep looking for the One True Grammar Book handed down from on high that covers all contingencies, but there is no such thing.But this book does a pretty good job, considering its affordable price and small size.The truth is that educators need many different weapons in their arsenals, and this is a good one.

Fantastic grammar guide even for non-ESL students
I am not an ESL student; I am an English speaking US citizen. I was looking for a grammar refresher, and could not find a decent book that went through the grammar structures I was looking for.

I started to look at ESL grammar books that helped ESL students, because I am about to take a Spanish immersion class and needed to know very specific grammar structure definitions to translate into Spanish.

For example, I needed to know the verb type infinitive, future perfect, etc, and I could not recall what those meant from my earlier years.

I couldn't find a single decent American guide out there.But the ESL guides cover them all in great detail.

If you are looking for a great grammar guide and are not even an ESL student, I highly recommend the ESL Grammar guides.This one in particular is fantastic.

I wish I could have purchased this in physical format, but I don't have the room to take it with me to Mexico.But on Kindle, I can do searches, etc, so it works out great for me.

ESL Grammar by Lester is a real gem!
The author is a Professor of Linguistics who has written several successful textbooks and has taught English grammar to both college students and teachers. He thoroughly knows the subject and has a gift for creating sample sentences that are clever, entertaining, and clearly illustrate the points he wants to make. A highly recommended book for serious students of English! ... Read more

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Eve's Diary by Mark Twain is the poignant, funny, and what-iftongue-in-cheek classic satire of the first couple in the Garden of Eden: how they met; their adventures in the Garden; their love; and their perplexing Mars versus Venus moments. The story has animals (with drawings) and details Eve's experiments with fire and other concepts that are new to just-created humans. A short section gives Adam's take on his understanding of this lovely creature who both frustrates him and makes him head for the Fall. The book's text and images are from our own collection of rare books. The whimsical line drawings by Lester Ralph are enhanced with highblack-and-white contrast for sharp and optimal viewing on your Kindle. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Now we know more about
Now we know more about the first days of life in humans, which could be so if we think that from our view now. ... Read more

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Master 188 irregular verbs in English

As an experienced student of English, you know the language can be a tricky one to learn thanks to its complex verb forms, like irregular verbs. Written by ESL guru Mark Lester--author of Grammar and Usage in the Classroom--this authoritative reference unravels the mystery of this verb form so you can take your English-language skills to the next level.

For each entry, you'll get example sentences and conjugations, a complete listing of complements, the most important phrasal verb constructions, and common expressions--all in an easy-to-understand format. In no time you'll master irregular verbs and converse like a native English speaker!

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Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Stephen Ward, Phog Allen, Masajiro Miyazaki, Mark Lester, Joel Weisman, Andrew Taylor Still, S. S. Still, Robert C. Fulford, David Lloyd Meredith, Mary Ann Block, Gideon Rodan, Phil Parker. Excerpt:Andrew Taylor Still Andrew Taylor Still (August 6, 1828 - December 12, 1917) is considered the father of osteopathy . Early life Still was born in Lee County, Virginia in 1828, the son of a Methodist minister and physician . At an early age, Still decided to follow in his father's footsteps as a physician. After studying medicine and serving an apprenticeship under his father, Still became a licensed Doctor of Medicine. He went on to serve as a surgeon with the U.S. Army during the Civil War. After the Civil War and following the death of three of his children from spinal meningitis in 1864, Still concluded that the orthodox medical practices of his day were frequently ineffective and sometimes harmful. He devoted the next ten years of his life to studying the human body and finding alternative ways to treat disease . During this period, he completed a short course in medicine at the new College of Physicians and Surgeons in Kansas City, Missouri in 1870. Osteopathy Still was known for his staff and boots, which were used as protection against snakes During the latter part of the 19th century, the germ theory of disease was being developed and gaining wide acceptance throughout most of the world. Still rejected such scientific research and opposed the use of drugs and vaccination and opined that "disease is the result of anatomical abnormalities followed by physiological discord." Still believed that by correcting problems in the body's structure and restoring normal blood supply, through the use of manual techniques now known as Osteopathic manipulative medicine (OMM), the body's a... ... Read more

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Considered one of the most important works of one of France's foremost philosophers, and long-awaited in English,begins with an extended exegesis of Lewis Carroll's . Considering stoicism, language, games, sexuality, schizophrenia, and literature, Deleuze determines the status of meaning and meaninglessness, and seeks the 'place' where sense and nonsense collide.Written in an innovative form and witty style,is an essay in literary and psychoanalytic theory as well as philosophy, and helps to illuminate such works as . ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Deleuze's most misunderstood and second most important book
Let me state right of the bat that this book is head-deep in psychoanalytic terminology and to me represents the best confrontation (way better than anti-oedipus and a thousand plateaus) of Deleuze's philosophy with psychoanalysis.I think many readers of Deleuze get caught up in Deleuze's originality and forget that he didn't try to describe a completely new system of everything, but rather wanted to describe more precisely the logic of a creative ontology.For a serious critique of psychoanalysis, the logic of sense is the book to go to, not anti-oedipus.It is for this reason - his desire to confront lacanian psychoanalysis head-on that I consider this to be his boldest book.

Also let me mention that it is in the appendix of this book that Deleuze deals with an extremely important problem which is almost completely overlooked by most Deleuze scholars - the problem of the other.This problem is inextricably linked with lacanian psychoanalysis and hence any critique of psychoanalysis must rigorously understand the ontology of the other.Deleuze here says that the ontological status of the other is that of a "possible world"which complicates things a bit because of his earlier critique of the concept of the possible in difference and repetition.

In contrast to one of the previous reviewers, I consider the idea that Deleuze is or was ever a post-semiotic theorist is completely wrong.In many interviews when asked about what he tried to do, he answers that he tried to come up with a theory OF signs (this is even his answer after he worked with guattari, which is very curious)... This is evidenced quite clearly in that one of his earliest books is on proust and signs, and that in Difference and Repetition, signs repeatedly come up as being the "flashes" as Deleuze describes them, that connect intensive differences.A book coming out called "the primacy of semiosis" uses a synthesis of Deleuze's ideas about univocity and signs with other theorists and will probably provide useful reading for this problem.

You can certainly read this book for fun, but I think the more "fun" of Deleuze's books are the works with Guattari, which I am sorry to say, are also his worst books.All of the genius in them (mostly stylistic, not conceptual) relies on the genius of his early work (the concept creation).The concepts were created very early, and as Badiou claims, Deleuze just found different names for them in different contexts.Not to bash Guattari, I think his "Three Ecologies" is quite good (not his earlier stuff though), but the combined work is more interesting than it is philosophically serious.lets not forget something quite crucial: Deleuze states guattari saved him from psychoanalysis - which is why this book is so important since it is the only and last confrontation Deleuze ever has WITHIN psychoanalytic terminology.

Again, I can't stress it enough, to understand this book, you need to read Lacan since much of the book is most obvioiusly a response to and a re-internalization (through "buggery") of lacan (the chapter titles make this quite obvious).

I also recommend as a supplement to this:
1) The Lacanian Subject - by Bruce Fink... Incredibly clear book on lacan's theory of the subject.
2) Difference & Repetition (Deleuze's Masterwork)
3) The Anti-Oedipus papers: Deleuze and guattari's letters to each other in the production of anti-oedipus.Here the problems become more obvious and the genesis of the style explicit.

Post structuralist, post linguistic, post semiotic...
Logic of sense is a very difficult book to get in toto. I'm not sure that it's even meant to be read that way. The book is arranged in a series of paradoxes that each take on a concept or problematic through which Deleuze undoes the hermeneutics of "meaning" in order to replace it with one built around "sense." What makes this book rewarding is its importance to an understanding of expression and imagination in Anti-Oedipus, and various images and signs in his two cinema books. But it almost takes having read his books on Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Bergson first to get the most out of Deleuze's strange and non-subjective ideas of sense and event. I will agree with the reviewer above that the book leans hard on the Stoics, but to stop there would be to miss Deleuze's project here. He wants to create a logic that establishes sense neither in speech nor in language, neither in sign systems nor in structures. He wants to place the production of sense in a philosophy that has restored its grasp of movement and becoming, has shaken its dogmatic belief in concepts and abstractions, and that creates and affirms through virtual qualities and events that, while communicating in fact and through the repetition of the familiar (order), still relate to and express pure qualities. This is really the companion piece to the cinema books but on literature. I don't know that his theory of sense carries well to performance and social convention. Which is frustrating, because we need a some good theories of social convention and language that can take us past linguistics and speech act theories. This is a fantastic book and one of his most inventive.

Carroll is the focus, but Stoics are the mainframe.
The Logic of Sense is a deceptive book, for you feel after the first 30 pages or so that you kinda grasp what's going on, only to put it down, take a breath and go: "Eh?" A reviewer once famously called it 'dry as a biscuit' or something to that effect, but I don't think it's dry so much as weird. Weird, that is, that it comes off so calm and *logical* when it's really so insane and delirious. Compared to Deleuze, the majority of postructuralists are like so many Fregeans.
All of which is not to say that the book is as inefficacious as he claims sense is. See, the book works almost as sense comes to by the end---at first shimmering but sterile, and then fecund and obscure. But rest assured, you do find your zone of clarity.
It is difficult, but nowhere near as difficult as the companion piece, Difference and Repetition. One will find many of the arguments there updated and clarified here.
Logicians and the analytic minded might find it annoying that Deleuze keeps referring to sense (which they might read "Sinn") but seems to be completely oblivious to the great Gottlob and his ilk. 'Tis true, after all, that Deleuze sleeps with the enemies in this one; namely, the Stoics and that evil ontological hyperinflationist Meinong.
Which brings me to a word to the wise: it can only help you to have a good understanding of Stoic physics, logic, and ethics before coming to this book of Deleuze's. He may jump from place to place a bit, but--and this is my reading--this book remains fundamentally Stoic. Basically, change "God" to "the aleatory" and endow "sayables" with a potency they were often denied in Stoic logic, and you got yourself a pretty good grasp of the material you'll find here. Or at least a start. IMO, it really does help to just slap your mind into Stoic mode and think about his approach from that angle, rather than simply trying to wrestle Anti-Oedipus or Cinema 2 into the Logic of Sense rubric.
I agree with one of the other reviewers, and believe me it pains me to say it, that the six or so series (chapters) on psychology and dynamic genesis pretty much blarney. They're boring and seem to stop the motors of the book by needlessly colliding with Freud. And since they take us away from the interesting Stoic stuff, and bring us to the other psychology stuff, one can't help but feel they're at least obsolete with respect to Anti-Oedipus and the Fold.
Other than that, it's mega.

Deceptively playful
This was the first book of Deleuze's that i read. The book begins with an analysis of Lewis Carrol's "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass". The often playful style of writing is deceptive; the concepts explored are often extremely complicated. Furthermore, i personally found it difficult to link together the various concepts, although of course Deleuze is not trying to write a unified whole. The first section of the book in which Deleuze deals primary with Carrol discusses, amongst other things, paradox, "pure becoming", and explores the relationship between the "surface" and the "murky depths". Somwhere a little after half way through "The Logic of Sense", Deleuze begins the "pyschoanalytic" portion of the book, applying several of the concepts developed previously, especially the relationship between "surfaces" and "depths". Personally, I enjoyed the first half of the book, and all of the talk about phallus' and orality seemed to come out of nowhere; there is no transition or preparation for this shift. The essays including in the appendix provide added (and helpful) insights into the main text and into Deleuze's thought in general. Overall, i found the "surface" of the Logic of Sense not too difficult to grasp, but the inner workings are indeed elusive.

the only being is the being of becoming as such
this century will be known as Deleuzian.................. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (3)

Excellent for beginning or ESL student
I got this book for my girlfriend who is an ESL student. It is very clear to both native English and English as a Second Language students. There are lots of examples and lots of exercises, with answers in the back. I was surprised by the clarity and completeness of the book. I have a Masters Degree in Computer Science and have done extensive technical technical writing professionally. The book clarified some grammatical usages that I was unsure of!

Tip: Don't buy it new. Textbooks are a rip off. Save $85 and get it used.

Bad
Ive ordered this book and its almost been a week and they havent delivered it yet. I have classes and dont have time for this game.

A simple and easy to understand book for a beginner.
I am using this book for ENG 26 at SF City college. In class, we discussed about how easy and simple this book is.There are tips on how to do better in grammar although not all the tips are really helpful. Some students got confused in "I realized" tip. This book is good for a beginner to really understand " the signals and rules" of a good English. ... Read more

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This is the story of the men in a tank destroyer in Europe during WWII in the mad rush to beat the Russians to Berlin. ... Read more

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Don't bother
The author may have served on Hellcats but there is little fact in this book. Much of the book involves detailed conversations between soldiers that no one could possibly remember and for which the author was, for the most part, not present. It is also clear that the author knows little about tanks. On the one hand, he ridicules the Sherman tank then praises the M-5 Stuart light tank as being "deadly". His description of German tanks is also absurd. He suggests that the mediocre Pz IV had 4 inches of armor and could only be taken out from the flank or by ricocheting shot off a hard surface into its under belly; that the light Pz II had dominated the battlefield during the initial stages of Barbarossa (he further claims that when attacked by 25 Pz II's, the Hellcats and Shermans had to rely upon flanking fire to stop these obsolete, thinly armored tanks); etc. I never finished the book. When I reached the point at which the author claims that the Hellcats dueled with a German Maus super heavy tank, which they only defeated by having a bulldozer bury the tank with dirt, I could take it no longer. This book is mostly fiction...bad fiction at that. ... Read more

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Exploring the Bible's message is easy and exciting with these complete do-it-yourself Bible study guides. Each study includes helpful outlines, charts, maps, diagrams and explanations. For personal, group or classroom use. ... Read more

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Review for Now I Get It By Larry Beason and Mark Lester
The Book, Now I Get It, by Larry Beason and Mark Lester is an excellent source for learning or improving your grammatical skills.The book is helpful in that it gives clear instructions.Beason and Lester included things like Proofreading Checklist, The Botton Line, Tips, and Reviews.The book is set up in an easy to use format.All related items have their own section, and each item has their own chapter within the section.I reccomend this book for anyone who needs to improve their grammar or if they need a quick reference. ... Read more