Forthcoming: Language Landscapes: The ESL teacher's guide to how English works

Brett Reynolds

Keywords:

TESL, TESOL, EAP, pedagogical grammar, grammaticality (usage-based), category–function distinction, constructional patterns, information structure, cohesion and coherence, fluency (instructional trade-offs), connected speech, pronunciation, orthography and phonics

Synopsis

Language landscapes is a practical map of English for TESL educators, built around form–meaning pairings and the needs of real classrooms. Adopting a CGEL-informed framework, it stabilizes the category – function distinction (e.g., determinatives vs determiner function), pares back overloaded labels (especially in the adverb/preposition space), and introduces syntax trees as a teacher’s analytic lens rather than a student exercise. Early chapters address standards and normativity alongside a usable model of grammaticality; the book then moves through phonology (with Southern Ontario reference vowels and connected-speech processes), vocabulary (frequency, distribution, deliberate practice), orthography and phonics, and high-utility constructions (questions, negation, relatives). Later chapters treat information packaging, coherence and cohesion, pragmatics and conversation (including digital turn-taking), and fluency across skills, connecting analysis to instructional decisions and trade-offs with accuracy. Throughout, the book foregrounds counter-example reasoning, common TESL pitfalls, and modular sequencing so instructors can enter via fluency/discourse, sound/writing, or grammar proper. The approach is functionalist and usage-aware, emphasizing community conventions, processing pressures, and change over time; trees and constructional patterns are tools for understanding, not ends in themselves. With concise diagnostics (e.g., NICER properties of auxiliaries), worked examples, glossaries, and cross-references, Language landscapes helps teachers say more with fewer rules – and better justify what to teach, when, and why.

Author Biography

Brett Reynolds, Humber College

Brett Reynolds is Professor of EAP and TESL at Humber Polytechnic and Adjunct Professor of linguistics at University of Toronto. His research focuses on the micro-syntax of English words and the ontology of grammaticality.

book cover

Published

April 16, 2026
LaTeX source on GitHub

Print ISSN

2364-6209
Cite as
Reynolds, Brett. Forthcoming. Language Landscapes: The ESL teacher's guide to how English works. (Textbooks in Language Sciences). Berlin: Language Science Press.

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.