Award-winning original fiction for learners of English. At seven levels, from Starter to Advanced, this impressive selection of carefully graded readers offers exciting reading for every student's capabilities.

Award-winning original fiction for learners of English. At seven levels, from Starter to Advanced, this impressive selection of carefully graded readers offers exciting reading for every student's capabilities. Nancy is a security guard at a detention centre for asylum seekers and refugees who have come to Britain to escape persecution in their own countries. Nancy thinks she has everything: a comfortable house, nice furniture, a boyfriend and a beautiful Rolex watch. Then she falls in love with George, an asylum seeker who has nothing, and her world changes completely. Contains a paperback and Audio CD with complete text recordings from the book.

Alexander Pushkin stands in a unique position as the founding father of Russian literature. In this Companion, leading scholars discuss Pushkin's work in its political, literary, social and intellectual contexts. In the first part of the book individual chapters analyse his poetry, his theatrical works, his narrative poetry and historical writings. The second section explains and samples Pushkin's impact on broader Russian culture by looking at his enduring legacy in music and film from his own day to the present. Special attention is given to the reinvention of Pushkin as a cultural icon during the Soviet period. No other volume available brings together such a range of material and such comprehensive coverage of all Pushkin's major and minor writings. The contributions represent state-of-the-art scholarship that is innovative and accessible, and are complemented by a chronology and a guide to further reading.

Focusing on one of the last untold chapters in the history of human flight, Dictatorship of the Air is the first book to explain the true story behind twentieth-century Russia's quest for aviation prominence. Based on nearly a decade of scholarly research, but written with general readers in mind, this is the only account to answer the question 'What is 'Russian' about Russian aviation?' From the 1909 arrival of machine-powered flight in the 'land of the tsars' to the USSR's victory over Hitler in 1945, Dictatorship of the Air describes why the airplane became the pre-eminent symbol of industrial progress and international power for generations of Russian statesmen and citizens. The book reveals how, behind a facade of daredevil pilots, record setting flights, and gargantuan airplanes, Russia's longstanding legacies of industrial backwardness, cultural xenophobia, and state-directed modernization prolonged the nation's dependence upon Western technology and, ultimately, ensured the USSR's demise.

In the early 1990s, competitive elections in the Russian Federation signaled the end to the authoritarian political system dominated by a single political party. More than ten years and many elections later, a single party led by Russian President Vladimir Putin threatens to end Russia's democratic experiment. Russia's experience with new elections is not unique but it does challenge existing theories of democratic consolidation by showing that competitive elections cannot guarantee successful democratic consolidation. This book explores the conditions under which electoral competition contributes to democratic development by examining impact of elections on democratic consolidation. The theoretic framework focuses on the construction of infrastructure that transforms competitive elections into mechanisms of democratic development and shows how candidates for national parliamentary office systematically chose electoral strategies that undermined Russia's democratic foundation and created the conditions for a new single party autocracy to emerge.

In 1998 and 1999, three of the largest providers of educational tests introduced computer-based versions of proficiency tests for English as a foreign language. Around the same time, many institutions began to offer Web-based tests for particular language courses and classes. These two phenomena have greatly added to the momentum of work in computer-assisted testing and mean that assessment through computer technology is becoming a fact for language learners in educational settings and therefore for teachers and researchers. This book is the first to consider the theoretical, methodological and practical issues and their implications for language-teaching professionals wishing to engage with computer-assisted assessment. It overviews the work in the field, evaluates examples of assessment though computer technology, and provides language teachers and researchers with practical guidelines for implementation.

In this book the author builds a comprehensive framework for the assessment of young language learners in both foreign language and second language learning situations. She begins by considering why we need a special book on young learner assessment, and describes the nature of young learner language learning. The assessment approach is task-based and is centred around tasks and techniques suitable for young learners, with particular emphasis on classroom assessment. Oral language assessment, and reading and writing assessment are addressed in separate chapters, as is the large-scale testing of young learners. Underpinned by sound theory, the book is full of practical guidelines, and draws on examples of assessment contexts, issues and practices from around the world. Assessing Young Language Learners was winner of the Kenneth W Mildenberger Prize in 2006.

For the past 20 years, task-based language teaching (TBLT) has attracted the worldwide attention of researchers, curriculum developers, teacher trainers and language teachers. However, much of the available literature and research has been from a psycholinguistic perspective, driven by the desire to understand how people acquire a second language. Far less research has been carried out as to whether TBLT works for real teachers and real learners in a classroom environment. This book aims to offer a unique contribution by uniting a discussion of task-based pedagogical principles with descriptions of their application to real life language education problems. It provides an account of the many challenges and obstacles that the implementation of task-based language education raises and discusses the different options for overcoming them. The book contains a substantial body of new research from Flanders, where the implementation of TBLT has been a nationwide project for the past fifteen years in primary, secondary and adult education.

Active Listening, Second Edition, is grounded in the theory that learners are more successful listeners when they activate their prior knowledge of a topic. Teacher's Manual 2 contains step-by-step practical teaching notes, optional speaking activities and listening strategies, culture notes, and suggested times for completing lessons. Photocopiable unit quizzes, two complete tests with Audio CD, and complete answer keys are also included.

The siege of Leningrad constituted one of the most dramatic episodes of World War II, one that individuals and the state began to commemorate almost immediately. Official representations of heroic Leningrad omitted and distorted a great deal. Nonetheless, survivors struggling to cope with painful memories often internalized, even if they did not completely accept, the state's myths, and they often found their own uses for the state's monuments. Tracing the overlap and interplay of individual memories and fifty years of Soviet mythmaking, the book contributes to understandings of both the power of Soviet identities and the de-legitimizing potential of the Soviet Union's chief legitimizing myths. Because besieged Leningrad blurred the boundaries between the largely male battlefront and the predominantly female home front, it offers a unique vantage point for a study of the gendered dimensions of the war experience, urban space, individual memory, and public commemoration.

The core of scientific computing is designing, writing, testing, debugging and modifying numerical software for application to a vast range of areas: from graphics, meteorology and chemistry to engineering, biology and finance. Scientists, engineers and computer scientists need to write good code, for speed, clarity, flexibility and ease of re-use. Oliveira and Stewart's style guide for numerical software points out good practices to follow, and pitfalls to avoid. By following their advice, readers will learn how to write efficient software, and how to test it for bugs, accuracy and performance. Techniques are explained with a variety of programming languages, and illustrated with two extensive design examples, one in Fortran 90 and one in C++: other examples in C, C++, Fortran 90 and Java are scattered throughout the book. This manual of scientific computing style will be an essential addition to the bookshelf and lab of everyone who writes numerical software.

In his own time, Shakespeare was best known to the reading public as a poet, and even today copies of his Sonnets regularly outsell everything else he wrote. For this edition, Stephen Orgel offers a warmly personal and original introduction to Shakespeare's best-loved and most widely read poems. Careful readings emphasize their sexual and temperamental ambiguity, their textual history and the special perils an editor faces when modernizing the original quarto's spelling, punctuation, and even layout. The edition retains the text of the Sonnets prepared by Gwynne Evans, together with his detailed notes on each, and a line-by-line commentary. Throughout, the 'voices' of the sonnets appear in all their intricacy and dramatic power.

Since the rediscovery of Elizabethan stage conditions early this century, admiration for Measure for Measure has steadily risen. It is now a favourite with the critics and has attracted widely different styles of performance. At one extreme, the play is seen as a religious allegory; at the other, it has been interpreted as a comedy protesting against power and privilege. Brian Gibbons focuses on the unique tragi-comic experience of watching the play, the intensity and excitement offered by its dramatic rhythm, the reversals and surprises which shock the audience even to the end. His introduction considers how the play's critical reception and stage history have varied according to prevailing social, moral and religious issues, which have remained highly sensitive. This updated edition contains a new introductory section by Angela Stock, which describes recent stage, film and critical interpretations, and an updated reading list.

Titus Andronicus is still regarded by many as a bad play of dubious authorship. Its adversaries have abhorred the violence of the action and the apparent lapses in the quality of the verse. Since 1945, however, the play has been taken increasingly seriously in both the theatre and the study: the violence and cruelty it depicts were disconcertingly matched by the events of two World Wars. Hughes joins those critics who take the play seriously, arguing for its unity of theme and its grim humour, and demonstrates that it is the work of a brilliant stage craftsman, confident in his mastery of space, movement and verse. The text is based on the first quarto, supplemented by crucial additions and stage directions from the Folio. For this updated edition, a new section is included on recent stage, film and critical interpretations by Sue Hall-Smith. An updated reading list completes the edition.

This is a fully annotated edition of all the poems which are now generally regarded as Shakespeare's, excluding the Sonnets. It contains Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, The Phoenix and the Turtle, The Passionate Pilgrim, and A Lover's Complaint. The introduction to the two long narrative poems examines their place within the classical and Renaissance European traditions, an issue which also applies to The Phoenix and the Turtle. John Roe analyses the conditions in which the collection was produced, and weighs the evidence for and against Shakespeare's authorship of A Lover's Complaint and the much-debated question of its genre. He demonstrates how in his management of formal tropes Shakespeare, like the best Elizabethans, fashions a living language out of handbook oratory. This updated edition contains a new introductory section on recent critical interpretations and an updated reading list.

From PhD student to post-doc, Phil Dee has been sharing his career experiences with fellow scientists in his regular and acclaimed Science Next Wave column since 2000. Now his invaluable and entertaining advice is available in this compact warts-and-all guide to getting your science PhD and subsequent post-doctoral employment as a researcher. Phil Dee offers you the inside track on what life in the lab is really like with down-to-earth suggestions for making the most productive use of your time, dealing with personal relationships in science and maintaining your morale, as well as dealing with more practical issues like how to design a good poster. As well as being based on the author's own experiences, the book brings together a wealth of advice from other scientists who have made it in science, and from a few who haven't. The book will be accessible to all early career scientists worldwide.

Since the publication of its first edition, this textbook has become the definitive student introduction to the subject. As with earlier editions, the seventh edition gives a clear understanding of fundamental legal concepts and their importance within society. In addition, this book addresses the ways in which rules and the structures of law respond to and impact upon changes in economic and political life. The title has been extensively updated and explores recent high profile developments such as the Civil Partnership Act 2005 and the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill. This introductory text covers a wide range of topics in a clear, sensible fashion giving full context to each. For this reason An Introduction to Law is ideal for all students of law, be they undergraduate law students, those studying law as part of a mixed degree, or students on social sciences courses which offer law options.

Essential reading for professionals who present data at meetings and academic conferences. This is an important career skill for anyone in the sciences, and the book features step-by-step instruction for creating clear and compelling presentations, from structuring a talk and developing effective PowerPoint slides through delivery before an audience. Includes color examples of slides and posters from actual presentations, and field-tested methods for success behind the podium. Also contains tips on answering questions and strategies for handling media and job interviews. The authors are professional public speakers who teach presentation skills to scientists and medical researchers at the National Institutes of Health and in the private sector.

This concise guide to planning, writing, and presenting research is intended for biology students of all levels, especially those in behavioral ecology, The reader is guided through a discussion of the nature of scientific research, how to plan research, and how to obtain funding. The authors give advice and guidelines for presenting results at research seminars and scientific meetings, and also provide useful tips on preparing abstracts and posters for scientific meetings. They discuss how to write an effective C.V. and give general tips on how to write clearly. The book is illuminated throughout with personal examples from the authors' own experiences and emphasis is placed on problems associated with field studies. All biologists will find this a valuable resource and guide for the early years of their scientific careers and established faculty will find it an essential instructional tool.

This Companion volume offers fifteen original essays on the Hellenistic world and is intended to complement and supplement general histories of the period from Alexander the Great to Kleopatra VII of Egypt. Each chapter treats a different aspect of the Hellenistic world — religion, philosophy, family, economy, material culture, and military campaigns, among other topics. The essays address key questions about this period: To what extent were Alexander's conquests responsible for the creation of this new 'Hellenistic' age What is the essence of this world and how does it differ from its Classical predecessor What continuities and discontinuities can be identified Collectively, the essays provide an in-depth view of a complex world. The volume also provides the most recent bibliography on the topics along with recommendations for further reading.