In contrast to literary or cultural studies linguistics is not taught in the EFL classroom, yet, it plays a major role in any English language teaching degree. Given this discrepancy it does not come as a surprise that students sometimes ask: "e;I want to be a teacher! Why do I need all this?"e; The main goal of this textbook is to demonstrate the relevance of linguistic expertise for the EFL classroom. It explores a wide range of topics (phonetics/phonology, lexis, corpus linguistics, text linguistics and the power of language) with a clear focus on providing a convincing answer to the question above. With its highly accessible style and layout, a wealth of examples and exercises as well as a large range of additional innovative online materials this textbook sets out to convince its readers that they will be better teachers if they are good linguists.

In contrast to literary or cultural studies linguistics is not taught in the EFL classroom, yet, it plays a major role in any English language teaching degree. Given this discrepancy it does not come as a surprise that students sometimes ask: "I want to be a teacher! Why do I need all this?" The main goal of this textbook is to demonstrate the relevance of linguistic expertise for the EFL classroom. It explores a wide range of topics (phonetics/phonology, lexis, corpus linguistics, text linguistics and the power of language) with a clear focus on providing a convincing answer to the question above. With its highly accessible style and layout, a wealth of examples and exercises as well as a large range of additional innovative online materials this textbook sets out to convince its readers that they will be better teachers if they are good linguists.

INTRODUCTION1 "I just want to be a teacher"2 A toolkit and what's in it2.1 What tools are good for2.2 The art of repairing2.2.1 Errors and why they are a good thing2.2.2 Interlanguage2.2.3 What is an errorSOUNDS3 "What are you sinking about?" - sounds in isolation3.1 The description of sounds3.2 A comparison of English and German consonants3.3 A comparison of English and German vowels4 "France is bacon" - Sounds in speech4.1 Phonemes, phones and allophones4.2 When Alastor Moody has a mat eye - allophonic contrasts4.3 "France is bacon" - sounds in speech4.3.1 Assimilation4.3.2 Weak forms4.3.3 LinkingWORDS AND BEYOND5 Nodes and links - the mental lexicon5.1 Webs of words, not lists5.2 The mental lexicon - some basics5.3 Stay connected - links in the mental lexicon5.3.1 Defining features5.3.2 Encyclopaedic relations5.3.3 (Mostly) sense relations5.3.4 Collocation and other relations in language use5.4 What Taboo can teach us about teaching words6 Think big! More than words6.1 Why tea can be powerful ... and why it shouldn't6.2 Lexical phrases6.3 Patterns and their relevance for the classroom6.4 Teaching patternsTHE CORPUS IN THE CLASSROOM7 The theory of practical corpus analysis7.1 The corpus as a collection of authentic language7.2 Words and their contexts7.3 More than words - annotation provided in corpora8 A more practical introduction to corpus analysis8.1 Wild cards, regular expressions and corpus queries8.2 Corpus queries - exploiting lemmatization and tagging8.3 Corpus queries - collocations8.4 Corpora in the classroom8.4.1 Benefits and opportunities8.4.2 Poblems and pitfallsTEXTS9 What makes a text a (good) text9.1 What makes a text a text - Standards of textuality9.2 The relevance of text structure9.2.1 Themes and rhemes9.2.2 Rhetorical Structure Theory10 Texts and the relevance of sentence structure10.1 Principles of text processing10.1.1 The Given-before-new Principle10.1.2 The Principle of End-focus10.1.3 The Principle of End-Weight10.2 Helpful sentence structures10.2.1 Non-canonical clause patterns10.2.2 Secondary clause patterns10.3 From text to good text - an example11 Texts and the relevance of the situation11.1 Spoken and written English11.2 The interpersonal dimension - politenessTHE POWER OF LANGUAGE12 The recipient12.1 Humans - the not so rational animals12.2 Communication and the unpacking of information12.2.1 Exploiting the Co-operative Principle12.2.2 Background knowledge12.2.3 Don't think of an elephant!13 The producer13.1 Packaging information13.1.1 The right word at the right time13.1.2 Beyond the word level13.1.3 Of swarms and floods - the power of metaphor13.1.4 Framing13.1.5 (Faulty) logic and argumentation13.2 Walking uphill