English Up to Par: AN ADVANCED COURSEBOOK OF ENGLISH AIMED AT RUSSIAN LEARNERS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

The coursebook purports to enlarge and to variegate learners' lexis, to make them more sensitive to the meanings of synonyms, to raise their awareness of, predominantly, formal and academic English. The coursebook tackles some of the modern scholastic issues, such as ?cognitive linguistics?, ?ludicrous communication? and other. The 12 Units chosen for the course are predominantly based on contemporary texts, selected not only going by the author's personal preference, but also by their topicality, relevance to learners' needs, lexical and stylistic contents. An attempt has been made to select texts whose levels of difficulty are commensurate with learners' capabilities. Some of the exercises presuppose elementary research by learners and encourage them to work on their own outside a classroom setting. The authour genuinely hopes that the coursebook will be of use to those willing to hone their English language skills and learn new facts about medieval and modern England, British sense of humour and what ludicrous communication and language play are all about.