Introduction to Linguistics

For Students of English as a Foreign Language

Hussein Abdul-Raof
Taibah University, Saudi Arabia

This book addresses the learning and academic needs of students of English as a foreign language. This work can be described as linguistics-made-easy for students of English as a foreign language. It is overseas student-friendly. It is characterized by simple language, and most importantly, it addresses the overseas student's needs in terms of learning an introductory course on linguistics.

This book also addresses the teachers’ needs in terms of the teaching materials required for the undergraduate course in linguistics. This work is for departments of English and departments of translation studies where the materials discussed in this book are required for the course/module on linguistics.

Teaching linguistics to overseas students studying English as a foreign language in their home universities is not the same as teaching it to students in the UK or the United States. Based on facts on the ground (the classroom) and the author's teaching experience, there are two types of Introduction to Linguistics: one is for the native students of English, and the other is for students of English as a foreign language.

Thus, there should be two distinct pedagogical and methodological approaches to this widely taught undergraduate course/module.

This book aims to achieve three major objectives: (i) to facilitate the comprehension of linguistics to the students of English as a foreign language in overseas universities, (ii) to equip this category of students whose English is not their mother language with sound awareness of and insight into the fundamental aspects of linguistics, and (iii) to make the major linguistic approaches and notions more accessible to them as students of English as a foreign language in overseas universities.

ISBN 9783862886043 (Hardbound). LINCOM Textbooks in Linguistics 14. 250pp. 2015.

A Coursebook for Students of English as a Foreign Language

Hussein Abdul-Raof
Taibah University, Saudi Arabia

Semantics: A Coursebook for Students of English as a Foreign Language is an essential resource for all undergraduate students studying semantics. This is a practical coursebook for the understanding of how meanings are expressed in the English language at the word level and the sentence level. This book is a step-by-step guide to the main notions of semantics, covering a large number of topics such as componential analysis, types of meaning, meaning relations, semantic unacceptability, selectional and collocational restrictions, types of emotional experience, types of synonymy, types of ambiguity, types of entailment, types of metonymy, lexical and semantic change, meaning and context, context of situation and context of culture, different types of culture, semantics and translation studies, metaphors and proverbs, meaning properties of words and sentences, semantic (thematic) roles, semantic classification of verbs, and the semantics of modal auxiliary verbs.

Semantics: A Coursebook for Students of English as a Foreign Language is 'semantics-made-easy’ for learners of English as a foreign language; presents the basic principles of the discipline of semantics; investigates word level semantics and sentence level semantics; presents a detailed and practical study of different types of meaning and meaning relations; provides a semantic study of verbs; offers a detailed discussion of componential analysis and the semantic componential features of words; presents an informative and practical discussion of the semantics of modal auxiliary verbs; gives a detailed account of English proverbs and metaphors; offers a discussion of translation strategies for proverbs and metaphors; and is the first book that deals with translation problems as semantic problems.

Hussein Abdul-Raof
Professor of Linguistics and Translation Studies
Taibah University, Saudi Arabia
(Formerly, University of Leeds, UK, School of Languages, Cultures, and Societies, January 1993 - August 2012).

ISBN 9783862885961. LINCOM Textbooks in Linguistics 15. 265pp. 2014.