What does language comprehension involve? How can teachers best go about selecting and designing effective listening materials for themselves? In Listening, the authors provide a much-needed perspective on the subject and include material from their own recent work in comprehension task design.

Discusses the need for foreign language programmes to teach literacy, and suggests approaches to curriculum development using a range of modern media texts, such as newspapers, music videos, and film as a basis for cultural analysis.

This book explains the literary history of Scotland in the early modern period (1560-1625) through the investigation of manuscript production, arguing that scottish Renaissance manuscript culture was far more colourful than is generally understood.

Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction offers insights into theories about the nature of language and meaning, human identity, and the power of language. Fully updated for 2011 and including a new chapter on 'Ethics and aesthetics', it steers a clear and lucid path through an often impenetrable subject.

Rick Rylance addresses the debate over the public value of literary studies, from antiquity to the present day. He offers an account of the foundational issue of 'the public good' and explores the disciplinary integrity of literary study.

Against a background of government incompetence and financial scandal, Arthur Clennam searches for the key to the affairs of the Dorrit family, prisoners for debt in the Marshalsea. Mixing humour and pathos, irony and satire, Little Dorrit reveals a master of fiction in top form. This new edition includes all of Phiz's original illustrations.

This timeless tale introduces readers to Dodder, Baldmoney, Cloudberry, and Sneezewort ... the last four gnomes in Britain. The brothers live a happy and peaceful life until the day that Cloudberry decides to go and explore. When he doesn't return the remaining three brothers build a boat and set off on an adventure of their own to find him.