Beyond the Sentence

Macmillan Books for Teachers

by Scott Thornbury

Introducing discourse analysis

Language, in its natural state is not isolated sentences: it is text. As teachers of second language users our priority is to help our learners engage with texts. In this witty and incisive book Scott Thornbury takes discourse apart to show how it is organised.

Starting with an examination of genre, he goes on to look at how we structure written and spoken text. Scott shows how these insights affect our work as language teachers and suggests practical activities that can be used in the classroom to help students work with texts.

Beyond the Sentence will help you:
• find, select and adapt text for language teaching
• unpack the hidden message of texts
• evaluate and use learners' texts in a more constructive ways

Genres: Linguistics, Teaching, Education, Nonfiction, Language

192 pages, Paperback

First published March 11, 2005

About the author

My name is Scott Thornbury. I'm a teacher and teacher educator, with over 30 years' experience in English language teaching, and an MA from the University of Reading. I am currently Associate Professor of English Language Studies at the New School in New York, where I teach on an on-line MA TESOL program. My previous experience includes teaching and teacher training in Egypt, UK, Spain (where I live), and in my native New Zealand. My writing credits include several award-winning books for teachers on language and methodology. I am series editor for the Cambridge Handbooks for Teachers (CUP). I was also the co-founder of the dogme ELT group.

Reviews

[Olga Ustimenko · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's an introduction to discourse analysis for those of us who are unfamiliar with it. As far as I understand, it introduces all the relevant concepts while being light enough that you don't choke on them. You learn a lot of things about different kinds of references, cohesion and coherence, the difference between spoken and written discourse, etc., while at the same time getting a serving of "case analyles" of classroom situations and what you can do to remedy things when students get lost producing discourse (that's writing and speaking, which they hopefully do every lesson, so yes, this book is relevant to everyday teaching). Also, one of the core texts for DELTA.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great work. I liked the way it is simply put. I particularly appreciated his photocopiable materials at the end of the book. Really good place to start on discourse analysis. Much easier than Halliday and Hasan!

[DrosoPHila · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite accessible.

[Melvyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some very useful applications of text-linguistic concepts in a text-processing skills teaching environment (e.g. on typical underuse, overuse and other misuse of conjuncts in particular stylistic settings, cohesion and coherence, schemas and scripts, macro-levels and micro-levels, text expectations and priming, keywords etc) and plenty of neat summaries that can be used for classroom handouts, as well as photocopiable classroom tasks and treatments of some very specific language issues such as natural usage of ‘this’, ‘that’ and ‘it’.

Also useful chapters on processing literary language and spoken texts. Deals with a broad range of text-reading skills, so I found quite a few of the tasks are not for the advanced student, but for several years I have successfully used material from this book in translation workshops at a language school.

[Iryna Donchenko · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beyond the Sentence by Scott Thornbury is an exceptional read! Thornbury's exploration of coherence and cohesion in different text types is insightful, and his practical approach to using these concepts in course books makes this book a must-read for teachers. I highly recommend it! ✨

[Justice · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very useful for the English teacher

[Amber + Casey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I popcorn read through this book. I did not read it cover-to-cover this time, but I am sure at some point in my future I will eventually read all chapters.

[Dominic Neesam · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Language learning should both begin and end in texts" and Thornbury's insightful book explains why...