Understanding the Paragraph and Paragraphing - Iain McGee

Understanding the Paragraph and Paragraphing - Iain McGee

Editor's Preface

Understanding the Paragraph and Paragraphing - Iain McGee

Martha C. Pennington [+-]
Birkbeck University of London
Martha C Pennington is a Research Fellow in Applied Linguistics and Communication at Birkbeck University of London. She holds a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania, where she became a tenured Lecturer teaching English to international students while completing her degree. She has also held Professorial and administrative posts at the University of California at Santa Barbara, the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the City University of Hong Kong, the University of Bedfordshire, Elizabethtown College, and the School for African and Oriental Studies of the University of London. She previously edited a column for Gendai Eigo Kyoiku (Modern English Teaching) and was editor-in-chief of Writing & Pedagogy. She is currently editor of the book series Innovation and Leadership in English Language Teaching (Brill, formerly Elsevier), Frameworks for Writing (Equinox), and Applied Phonology and Pronunciation Teaching (Equinox). Pennington’s books on pronunciation are Phonology in English Language Teaching: An International Approach(Longman), Phonology in Context (Palgrave Macmillan), and (with P Rogerson-Revell) English Pronunciation Teaching and Research: Contemporary Perspectives (Palgrave Macmillan). She has published articles on the teaching of pronunciation in edited collections and in TESOL Quarterly, The Modern Language Journal, and RELC Journal, and has guest-edited a special issue (52.1) of RELC Journal on Pronunciation Teaching.

Description

Understanding the Paragraph and Paragraphing is a work of wide-ranging and in-depth scholarship on the nature of the paragraph and the factors involved in making paragraphing decisions when constructing written text. Its comprehensive scope includes discussion on the origin of the paragraph and its nature as explored in centuries past and in recent work in discourse analysis and corpus linguistics, with implications drawn for pedagogy and future research. McGee profiles the work of key figures who helped to set traditional notions of the paragraph, and then turns to recent and contemporary empirical research and theorizing, including his own, on paragraph structure and on writing process activity related to paragraphing decisions. The extensive review and close analysis of sources, combined with the author’s knowledge of research traditions and methodologies, provides a strong foundation for McGee’s probing study of the paragraph and the resulting enlightened understandings of it that the book provides. Given that what the general public and indeed most teachers know about paragraphs and paragraphing does not represent actual paragraph structure or paragraphing practice, the pedagogical guidance which the author provides based on a thorough review of existing research makes this an especially useful book.

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Citation

Pennington, Martha. Editor's Preface. Understanding the Paragraph and Paragraphing. Equinox eBooks Publishing, United Kingdom. p. vii-viii Jan 2018. ISBN 9781781792872. https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/view-chapter/?id=33983. Date accessed: 29 Mar 2024 doi: 10.1558/equinox.33983. Jan 2018

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