For the Quality Reform in higher education to work, students need high-quality textbooks. This book: The English Language - A Text-Based Resource Book, is the first one ever which, in a Norwegian context, systematically uses the study of the English language as a means towards improving the students' own writing. There is a recurrent theme in the book: increased awareness of the resources of the language and their effects in numerous literary and non-literary texts will make users able to choose correct, varied and effective wordings when they write. This awareness includes knowledge of the building blocks of the language and how they combine insight into the differences between English and Norwegian grammar on the sentence level an understanding of levels of style and level-specific choices in lexis and grammar some ability to evaluate words form within the huge English lexicon knowledge of the linguistic characteristics of different genres, literary and non-literary and, not least, sensitivity to and proficiency in correct, concise and effective communication on the paragraph and text levels The book is amply illustrated by authentic text materials and contains more than 190 tasks. These range from the simple exercises at the beginning to the fifteen challenging text-based writing tasks in chapter 9. At the end there is advice on punctuation and the use of capital letters and a full index. The English language - A Text-Based Book, is a suitable undergraduate introduction which also paves the way for more advanced studies of the English language at higher levels.