This chapter introduces some language concepts at the semiotic level. This helps to see language systems as socially constructed and also as responding to communicative need. It is foundational in our exploration of critical thinking; it helps us to question assumptions made about how we frame our communicative world as ‘natural’ or ‘given’. If we can see language as the mechanism of representation and referentiality, then we can consider alternatives and we can see how the use of language is often at the heart of conflicting narratives and perceptions. Indeed, sometimes language is the problem. Being articulate in Academic English enables us to express our ideas, to understand, to analyse and respond to, other people’s usage of language. First, let’s look at the fundamentals of referentiality and language use.

In this chapter, we look at the basics of referencing and citation: the conventional ways of identifying our sources and for showing where we have applied them in our work. Referencing conventions are catalogued in a relatively small number of documentation styles that are common across different academic disciplines – for example, APA 7, Chicago 17 and MLA 9 styles, which are outlined in this chapter. The chapter is organised in seven different parts. First, we explore the reasons for referencing in academic writing and we look at the different documentation styles used to format references and citations. Next, we survey the essential features that make up a reference and offer some ways of dealing with sources that may not conform to standard referencing templates. We provide detailed instructions on presenting references and citations in the APA 7, Chicago 17 and MLA 9 styles, including using in-text citations and discursive footnotes. The final part of the chapter looks at composing and formatting reference lists.

The ability to respond critically to any text is a learnt ability which needs some innate ability before it can be developed. That is, critical thinking is a variegated talent, linked to intelligence and curiosity, which is hard-wired into the human brain but is not always fostered equally. We are all different according to aspects of biology, intelligence and personality. Likewise, we are all different according to our experience of being encouraged to use these natural abilities. Indeed, there is even some evidence that critical thinking is an ability that is only really developed at all after the teenage years. This idea is consistent with other theories of literacy, which state that there must be an inherent ability to decode language before it can be developed, and that any form of literacy is incremental. That means that each layer of literacy builds on previous levels, and that we must be cognitively ready for each stage. Critical literacy is, therefore, a higher level of literacy which builds on foundational forms of literacy. We need to be able to decode language systems at the semiotic, denotational and connotational levels in order to produce sense. Once we produce this meaning through textual reception, we can start to definitively question what we are being told, building on whatever latent critical ability we already have.

In this chapter, we address the aspects of style and presentation that students most commonly encounter in preparing their essays for submission. What may seem like minor details of writing, like ellipses, italics and quotation marks, are actually aspects of clarity. They explain in shorthand form the nature of your material and how you are using it. As with the referencing conventions we looked at in the previous chapter, common style conventions are understood by other academic readers and are part of engaging in an academic conversation. The chapter is organised A–Z by topic so that you can locate the information you need quickly and easily when you encounter a style query in the course of your writing. However, the unique circumstances of your own writing assignments means that you will occasionally have to make judgements about how to present your information.

There is, typically, some resistance when the word grammar is mentioned, especially if it is in the context of a textbook. That is because grammar is often seen as something that must be forced on students. As with most ideas of freedom, compulsion in grammatical education is resisted when people see no value in it. Another reason for resistance to grammar is because formal grammar (beyond a few basics) was dropped from the education system in many English-speaking countries around 30 years ago, and it is thus unfamiliar, or even ‘strange’. Generations of students have been convinced that they do not need to ‘do’ grammar, since they can already speak the language quite fluently. There is even the belief, articulated by people who are most typically monolingual in English, which is that grammar is only for people who need to be taught how to speak English; that is other people.

In this chapter, we examine some basic principles for doing academic research. After defining primary, secondary and tertiary sources, we consider the different roles each source type plays in your research and the value of commonly used sources like journal articles and academic books. A research plan, as outlined in this chapter, plays a crucial role in your essay-writing timeline. It lays out your research strategy, so that you have a clear idea of what material you need and where you will find it. More than this, a research plan progresses your reading from most foundational to most sophisticated so that you can approach your highest value sources – such as journal articles – with more confidence.

In this chapter, we look at the key written form through which undergraduate students in the Humanities practise participating in this scholarly dialogue: the academic essay. Even where different disciplines have unique requirements for how information is delivered in an essay, Humanities essays share broad features such as their overall structure, thesis-driven argument and evidence-based argumentation. If you can master these foundational aspects, you can readily adapt your writing to meet different disciplinary contexts. Moreover, these same skills can be used in other types of academic writing that are not essays but which foreground argument just like the essay. This chapter is organised into three parts. It begins by looking at the essay as a distinct genre with recognisable conventions that support participation in scholarly dialogue. Next, it reviews the important steps that precede essay writing: breaking down the question, planning your argument and structure, and project managing your essay. The chapter covers the essentials of essay writing: the introduction, body paragraphs and conclusions.

The English language is the world’s first – and so far, only – global language. There are various reasons for this, including that it was the language used historically in the British Empire: the most powerful and extensive empire the world has ever seen. English is also the language exported to the world by the United States of America, through its economic, military, cultural and scientific power for the past century (Singh, 2005). This has resulted in English having high utility as a lingua franca, or a ‘common’ language, which is very useful as a means of communication between people and nations who typically do not share any other language. Consequently, English is learned and/or spoken to some extent by between 1.5–2 billion people today – or around one-quarter of the world’s population (Crystal, 2009, pp.61–9).

Chapter 8 focuses on ditransitive verbs, which have a direct and an indirect object. In English, ditransitive verbs participate in the double object construction as well as in a prepositional dative construction. Most second language learners of English, whose language does not have a double object construction, find these structures difficult to acquire. In Spanish, direct and indirect object pronouns are clitics and appear preverbally in certain contexts. Some dative clitic constructions are like the English double object construction. Some direct objects are marked with a preposition in Spanish, which also causes significant difficulty to learners. The first part of the chapter focuses on the acquisition of the double object construction in English and covers foundational intervention studies on this topic. The second part of the chapter turns to the expression of objects in Spanish and presents classroom and lab intervention studies promoting the acquisition of accusative and dative clitic pronouns and of Differential Object Marking in second language learners and heritage speakers.

Tolstoy, himself a polyglot, is one of the world’s most widely translated writers, with at least ten English versions of War and Peace and a good thirteen of Anna Karenina, not to mention multiple translations of the shorter works and philosophical and religious treatises. The diversity of the English Tolstoy corpus makes it impossible to come up with a clear ranking of translations based on quality. Certain unique features of the writer’s language pose particular challenges to translators, such as his tendency to repeat simple, morally loaded words at key moments; his omissions of words that usually need to be supplied in English; and the complexity of his nature descriptions. English translations of Tolstoy’s works have flowed in two parallel streams, one on each side of the Atlantic. Louise and Aylmer Maude produced the most sustained and authoritative body of Tolstoy translations. The twentieth century has seen new trends: Tolstoy’s works have become easily available on the Internet both in Russian and in English; Russia offers generous grant support to fund translations of classic Russian literature; and a new authoritative Academy collected works is underway, which will surely necessitate revisions of translations, or production of new ones.

A familiar phenomenon in derivational morphology is potentiation – the creation of new contexts for some affix by the prior addition of some other affix; thus, ‑able potentiates ‑ity in English. Less familiar is the reverse phenomenon of counterpotentiation – the licensing of an affix by the subsequent addition of some other affix. In English, -al counterpotentiates -ic in forms such as whimsical, which has no counterpart in -ic without -al (*whimsic). Facilitatory relations of these two sorts reflect distinct modes of rule combination. The potentiation of an outer rule by an inner rule is a kind of rule composition in which the domain-of-definition of the composite is that of the inner rule; the counterpotentiation of an inner rule by an outer rule is a mode of rule combination in which the domain-of-definition of the combination is disjoint from that of the inner rule. Potentiation enhances conformity to the intermediate well‑formedness criterion; counterpotentiation is a deviation from this criterion.

Rule combination can contribute to morphological simplicity. Synchronically, rule combinations (like word combinations) are sometimes stored as formulaic units, and this fact contributes to a morphological system’s processing simplicity, since accessing a stored rule combination directly is simpler than decomposing that combination into its component rules for separate lookup. Stored, formulaic rule combinations may also contribute to diachronic simplifications of a language’s morphology, since they are the locus of reanalyses that may eventuate in “affix telescoping,” the development of a rule combination into a simple rule. But affix telescoping is not a monolithic phenomenon; it involves the reduction of a rule combination’s combinatory transparency along at least four dimensions. Thus, it is possible to find rule combinations that are progressing toward reanalysis as simple rules without yet having reached the point of reanalysis.