How to Have Fun Learning about the English Language

If you have always been fascinated with language and have been curious to know more about the rules and reasons behind them - but you haven’t wanted to read a dull text book; there are other ways to learn more and have fun while you are doing it. These methods can also be used to help teachers inspire students who are bored with learning about language and rules the traditional way.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. 

   Go to your favorite bookstore or on-line bookseller and order the books listed in the remaining steps. Keep in mind: they are not listed in any particular order and if you can only afford one, any one of them will do the trick. However, the more you read the better.

2. 

   “Far from the Madding Gerund and other dispatches from Language Log”
   by Mark Liberman and Geoffrey K. Pullum

3. 

   “The English Language – A Guided Tour of the Language”
   by David Crystal

4. 

   “Eats, Shoots and Leaves – The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation” by Lynne Truss

5. 

   “Language Myths”
   by Laurie Bauer and Peter Trudgill

6. 

   “The Mother Tongue – English and How It Got That Way”
   by Bill Bryson

7. 

   “Made in America – An Informal History of the English Language in the United States”
   by Bill Bryson

Tips & Warnings

• You can learn a lot about language from reading ANY type of book, magazine or newspaper by simply paying close attention to the different vocabularies and styles of writing used by different writers.
• Check out my fun linguistics blog too. http://www.walkinthewords.blogspot.com
• The books listed above are just a few of the many available interesting, informative and entertaining books available about the english language.

[Have-Sense]

on 6/12/2008 This article doesn't do what the title promises. This is not a "How To" but a book list. It doesn't belong on this site.

[ursaminor]

on 4/20/2008 The Deluxe Transitive Vampire (and I can't remember right now who wrote it, but Amazon.com has it,)is also excellent and a lot of fun. The author has written a couple of very entertaining and easy to use grammar books, worth checking out. Thanks for the book list!