The "Living Language" series has been written to meet developments in the teaching of A Level English Language and Literature. It has been designed to fulfil assessment objectives specified for AS and A Level syllabuses for 1998 onwards. Essentially practical books, the "Living Language" series provides information, ideas and background theory which can be easily accessed through activities and investigations. This text should enable students to read and listen in a linguistically informed way, and to develop their own writing and speaking activities. This volume covers a comprehensive variety of non-literary texts in a way that should develop the student's analytical skills. Students are required to investigate different genres of text including: junk mail and other ephemera; journalism; magazines; speeches, monologues and narratives; biography, travelogue and letters; official texts (for example, government publications, public warnings and propaganda); advertising; and educational texts.
Michael Jago read Ancient History and Philosophy at University College, Oxford before settling in the USA in 1980. For fifteen years he ran an educational travel business, focusing on the battlefields of Western Europe. Previously a publisher and editor of a number of journals, he now specialises in biography.