Law is a profession that requires the ability to read critically, write well, synthesize sources from research, and speak concisely and clearly. American Legal English was developed to help non-native speakers improve their ability to understand and communicate in English with their legal counterparts around the world. The text is an introduction to basic legal information and the U.S. legal system that addresses the major areas of law and provides actual cases and statutes so that students can become familiar with legal syntax and legal vocabulary.

Each chapter addresses a particular area of the law and has three parts:

• Discovering Connections is a warm-up activity that focuses on non-legal concepts that lead into a discussion of the law.
• Legal Listening and Legally Speaking offer the opportunity to practice new vocabulary terms before they are used in context later in the chapter.
• Legal Thumbnail provides a simplified summary of the law with actual statutory and case materials.

In the second edition, the language development activities have been moved to the back of the book and are organized in the categories of writing, reading, oral communication, grammar, and culture.

Supplemental listening activities (21 tracks) are available via an audio CD (978-0-472-00325-9) or MP3 download (978-0-472-00360-0) is available for use in conjunction with this textbook. Running time: 000:40:02.

The usual definition of the term “literacy” generally corresponds with mastering the reading and writing of a spoken language. This narrow scope often engenders unsubstantiated claims that print literacy alone leads to, among other so-called higher-order thinking skills, logical and rational thinking and the abstract use of language. Thus, the importance of literacy for deaf children in American Sign Language (ASL) is marginalized, asserts author Kristin Snoddon in her new book American Sign Language and Early Literacy: A Model Parent-Child Program. As a contrast, Snoddon describes conducting an ethnographic, action study of the ASL Parent-Child Mother Goose program, provided by a Deaf service agency in Ontario, Canada to teach ASL literacy to deaf children.

       According to current scholarship, literacy is achieved through primary discourse shared with parents and other intimates, which establishes a child’s initial sense of identity, culture, and vernacular language. Secondary discourse derives from outside agents and interaction, such as expanding an individual’s literacy to other languages. Snoddon writes that the focus of the ASL Parent-Child Mother Goose program is on teaching ASL through rhymes and stories and some facets of the culture of Deaf ASL users. This focus enabled hearing parents to impart first-language acquisition and socialization to their deaf children in a more natural primary discourse as if the parents were Deaf themselves. At the same time, hearing parents experience secondary discourses through their exposure to ASL and Deaf culture.

       Snoddon also comments on current infant hearing screening and early intervention and the gaps in these services. She discusses gatekeeper individuals and institutions that restrict access to ASL for young Deaf children and their families. Finally, she reports on public resources for supporting ASL literacy and the implications of her findings regarding the benefits of early ASL literacy programming for Deaf children and their families.

Abolitionist, women's rights activist, and social reformer, Angelina Grimké (1805-79) was among the first women in American history to seize the public stage in pursuit of radical social reform. "I will lift up my voice like a trumpet," she proclaimed, "and show this people their transgressions." And when she did lift her voice in public, on behalf of the public, she found that, in creating herself, she might transform the world. In the process, Grimké crossed the wires of race, gender, and power, and produced explosions that lit up the world of antebellum reform. Among the most remarkable features of Angelina Grimké's rhetorical career was her ability to stage public contests for the soul of America—bringing opposing ideas together to give them voice, depth, and range to create new and more compelling visions of social change. 
     Angelina Grimké: Rhetoric, Identity, and the Radical Imagination is the first full-length study to explore the rhetorical legacy of this most unusual advocate for human rights. Stephen Browne examines her epistolary and oratorical art and argues that rhetoric gave Grimké a means to fashion not only her message but her very identity as a moral force.