About the Book
Would you like to improve your English language skills using a book that is filled with humorous dialogues, fun exercises, and lots of jokes? Would you like to learn many new idioms and deepen your knowledge of the language? Would you like to have a book that is divided into many small chapters which are easy to cover in short periods of time? If so, Have Fun Talking is the book for you! In this unusual English language learning book you will find 101 informal conversations in English with exercises, idioms, jokes and words of wisdom. Have Fun Talking is designed for the busy professional, the continuing student, and tutors and their students. It is divided into 101 informative conversations with Chinese translations and exercises designed to test comprehension. Exercises include sentence substitutions, matching words and definitions, filling in blanks, true and false, extended readings, and idioms. Unlike a novel, which requires an extended commitment of time to read, this book is designed to be read and studied in small pieces at your convenience and at your own pace. Have Fun Talking is both useful as a textbook for tutors and for larger classes. Each dialogue involves just two characters, and so the format is useful for a variety of learning situations, from one-to-one lessons to small group settings to large classrooms. Have Fun Talking features a joke on the bottom of nearly every page. Jokes are usually built on the fact that the punchline contains a word with two meanings, and this presents opportunities to expand comprehension and vocabulary. The dialogues in Have Fun Talking occur in a variety of situations- at the zoo, at an ice cream shop, at a concert, at school, at the library, at the ballpark, by the sea flying kites, at a dance, at a bar, at the mall, the music store, the shoe store, you name it! There are dialogues set in a restaurant, at the train station, at the swimming pool and hiking in the mountains. You will learn useful sentences for situations involving buying and leasing cars, booking a flight, selecting and purchasing a home, making a dentist appointment, sending a package, and making withdrawals and deposits at the bank. Chapters include: Two Animals Talking, School Talk, Going Places, Buying Things, Fishing, Transportation, Outdoor Activities, Travel, Money and Houses, Life Situations, and Health and Beauty. There is an answer key at the back of the book for every exercise. Students who wish to maximize the effectiveness of Have Fun Talking will also be happy to know that there is a CD recording of all 101 dialogues. The recording artists are all native English speakers from the United States and England. We encourage those who have found the book useful to also acquire the recorded dialogues. Listening to and emulating the native speakers pronunciation and cadence will enhance the Have Fun Talking experience and help you to become more skilled at speaking English.
About the Author: Mark Alan Daves has been a teacher of Language Arts in public schools in Michigan, Illinois and Florida. He received a Bachelors Degree in the Teaching of English from the University of Illinois at Chicago and holds a State of Florida Professional Educator certificate. Since 2008 he has been teaching English as a Second Language at every grade level in schools and language institutes in Taiwan. His students have ranged from kindergarten to university level. He has taught in public schools, private schools, in corporate classrooms, and as a tutor in both one-to-one and small group settings. During his years in Taiwan the author came to the realization that students benefit from informal conversations, and so this book was written to model typical casual exchanges between native English speakers. Mr. Daves was born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and has lived in Chicago, Illinois and Cape Coral, Florida. Many of the dialogues in Have Fun Talking are based on his personal experiences in these locations. During his childhood he spent summers swimming and fishing at Lincoln Lake in northeast Kent County, Michigan, where his family owned a cottage. Those summers are the foundation on which the chapters about fishing and camping are based. These days Mr. Daves lives at the foot of Feifong Mountain near Cyonglin, Taiwan, where he enjoys the challenge of hiking the beautiful trails that twist through the nearby mountains. He is an avid swimmer and enthusiastic cook. The dialogue entitled Making Noodle Soup is an actual step by step recipe, which if followed, will yield an excellent and healthy meal! It is the hope of the author that students who use Have Fun Talking will enjoy the process of adding vocabulary, learning idioms, and gain greater skill and confidence as speakers and readers of the English language. He also hopes that students will enjoy the bits of wisdom and jokes embedded in the text.
