This book addresses fundamental questions regarding the relationships between successful language learning and strategy use and development, according to learner, situational or target variables. It considers strategy effectiveness from an individual point of view and discusses pedagogical issues, especially relating to teacher perceptions and training, classroom and learner factors, methodology and content. This new edition has been reworked and revised to include an extensive review, analysis and re-interpretation of the existing literature and an update on the theoretical debate surrounding language learning strategies. The research methodology section has been considerably extended and detailed explanations are now given for how to analyse data from research studies. Rather than focusing on strategies divorced from the 'real world' of the classroom, this book explores the issues from the teaching/learning point of view and will be of interest to students, teachers, trainee teachers, teacher educators and researchers alike.

How to improve your reading, listening and communication skills in ArabicDo you want to build on your Arabic reading, writing and listening skills? Improve your ability to communicate in this language? This is the book for you. Offering practical sessions and exercises, each module contains a wide range of authentic, contemporary texts so that you can practice your skills as they develop. Moving you from the intermediate to the advanced level of Arabic you will work through sessions on culture and society, the environment, education in the Arab world, global issues, media and communication, the economy, sports, and arts and literature. Each module follows the same structure, covering the essential skills of reading, grammar, vocabulary, listening, translation, writing and speaking.The book includes:A wide variety of drills to help you refine your reading, writing, speaking and listening skillsA key to exercises so you can check your progressA glossary of key Arabic termsAccess to online audio material to accompany the listening drills

This volume, grounded on usage-based models of language, is an edited collection of empirical research examining how cognitive linguistics can advance Japanese pedagogy. Each chapter presents an acquisition or classroom study which focuses on challenging features and leads instructors and researchers into new realms of analysis by showing innovative views and practices resulting in better understanding and improved L2 learning of Japanese.

This book discusses literacy development in heritage language speakers and presents the results of four different quantitative studies that investigate the transfer of literacy skills in bi- and multilingual language development. The empirical studies focus on different populations of pupils, most of them located in various parts of Switzerland, and emphasise the potential residing in shared or transferred resources between their heritage languages and the languages spoken in the region to which their family has immigrated. The goal of all studies was to gain an understanding of the factors, both linguistic and non-linguistic in nature, that contribute to the development of language skills in both the heritage and school languages. Theoretical assumptions are put to the test via hypothesis testing and the generally shared assumptions on bilingual education are questioned based on the data. Furthermore, methodological problems in the investigation of linguistic interdependence are discussed. This book contributes to the scholarly investigation of potential beneficial effects in academic proficiency across languages in migrant children.

This book discusses literacy development in heritage language speakers and presents the results of four different quantitative studies that investigate the transfer of literacy skills in bi- and multilingual language development. The empirical studies focus on different populations of pupils, most of them located in various parts of Switzerland, and emphasise the potential residing in shared or transferred resources between their heritage languages and the languages spoken in the region to which their family has immigrated. The goal of all studies was to gain an understanding of the factors, both linguistic and non-linguistic in nature, that contribute to the development of language skills in both the heritage and school languages. Theoretical assumptions are put to the test via hypothesis testing and the generally shared assumptions on bilingual education are questioned based on the data. Furthermore, methodological problems in the investigation of linguistic interdependence are discussed. This book contributes to the scholarly investigation of potential beneficial effects in academic proficiency across languages in migrant children.

This book explores how complex systems theory can contribute to the understanding of classroom language learner motivation through an extended examination of one particular, situated research project. Working from the lived experience of the participants, the study describes how action research methods were used to explore the dynamic conditions operating in a foreign language classroom in Japan. The book draws attention to the highly personalised and individual, yet equally co-formed nature of classroom foreign language learning motivation and to the importance of agency and emotions in language learning. It presents an extended illustration of the applicability of complex systems theory for research design and process in SLA and its narrative approach shines light upon the evolving nature of research and role of the researcher. The study will be a valuable resource for practitioners, researchers and postgraduate students interested in classroom language teaching and learning, especially those with a focus on motivation among learners.

This book constitutes a holistic study of how and why late starters surpass early starters in comparable instructional settings. Combining advanced quantitative methods with individual-level qualitative data, it examines the role of age of onset in the context of the Swiss multilingual educational system and focuses on performance at the beginning and end of secondary school, thereby offering a long-term view of the teenage experience of foreign language learning. The study scrutinised factors that seem to prevent young starters from profiting from their extended learning period and investigated the mechanisms that enable late beginners to catch up with early beginners relatively quickly. Taking account of contextual factors, individual socio-affective factors and instructional factors within a single longitudinal study, the book makes a convincing case that age of onset is not only of minimal relevance for many aspects of instructed language acquisition, but that in this context, for a number of reasons, a later onset can be beneficial.

This book offers a comprehensive account of individual differences variables as well as contextual factors that impinge on second language learners' willingness to communicate (WTC). Firstly, it adopts a macro-perspective on WTC, which entails an attempt to identify variables that are related to WTC, taking into account the specificity of the Polish higher education setting. Secondly, it embraces a micro-perspective on WTC, striving to pinpoint the individual and contextual influences on levels of WTC in the course of regularly-scheduled, naturally-occurring English classes, as well as to capture the dynamic nature of WTC during such classes. Together, these perspectives bring the reader closer to understanding the mechanisms underlying WTC in specific contexts, thereby providing a basis for recommendations for classroom practice that could translate into learners' success. It will be of interest to second language acquisition researchers and students, as well as to methodologists and materials writers who can use the research findings to improve the practice of teaching and learning speaking in the language classroom.

This edited volume provides an overview of current thinking and directions for further research in applied linguistics by bringing together in a single volume a range of perspectives regarding original research agendas and innovative methodological approaches. It focuses not only on the challenges that applied linguistics researchers have been facing in recent years but also on producing workable and productive research designs and on identifying ways of how alternatives to conventional research methodologies can be used. Discussions featured in the volume include the so-called ‘Bilingual Advantage’ in psycho- and neurolinguistics; the optimal starting age debate in foreign language learning; the growing interest among applied linguists in more nuanced and more complex (statistical) data analysis and the priority given to more descriptive and social approaches to linguistics rather than to theorising. The collection will be a useful reference and stimulus for students, researchers and professionals working in the areas of applied linguistics, psycholinguistics, second language acquisition and second language education.

This edited volume provides an overview of current thinking and directions for further research in applied linguistics by bringing together in a single volume a range of perspectives regarding original research agendas and innovative methodological approaches. It focuses not only on the challenges that applied linguistics researchers have been facing in recent years but also on producing workable and productive research designs and on identifying ways of how alternatives to conventional research methodologies can be used. Discussions featured in the volume include the so-called 'Bilingual Advantage' in psycho- and neurolinguistics; the optimal starting age debate in foreign language learning; the growing interest among applied linguists in more nuanced and more complex (statistical) data analysis and the priority given to more descriptive and social approaches to linguistics rather than to theorising. The collection will be a useful reference and stimulus for students, researchers and professionals working in the areas of applied linguistics, psycholinguistics, second language acquisition and second language education.

This book is open access under a CC BY licence. It spans the areas of assessment, second language acquisition (SLA) and pronunciation and examines topical issues and challenges that relate to formal and informal assessments of second language (L2) speech in classroom, research and real-world contexts. It showcases insights from assessing other skills (e.g. listening and writing) and highlights perspectives from research in speech sciences, SLA, psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics, including lingua franca communication, with concrete implications for pronunciation assessment. This collection will help to establish commonalities across research areas and facilitate greater consensus about key issues, terminology and best practice in L2 pronunciation research and assessment. Due to its interdisciplinary nature, this book will appeal to a mixed audience of researchers, graduate students, teacher-educators and exam board staff with varying levels of expertise in pronunciation and assessment and wide-ranging interests in applied linguistics.

This book fills an existing gap in language learning motivation research by examining the applications of current motivational theories and models from WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, developed) contexts to educational systems in Asian contexts. All chapters are focused on second language (L2) motivation as it applies to the EFL situation in Asian countries where English is a mandatory subject in school. Themes in the volume cover the use of possible L2 selves as a theoretical model of motivation, the role of teacher motivation and demotivation in non-European educational systems, study abroad, motivation among adolescents, cross-cultural differences in learner motivation among Asian cultures and the influence of native speakerism on language motivation and cultural identity. This book will appeal to ESL/EFL educators, postgraduate students, researchers and teacher-trainers both inside and outside Asian countries, who are interested in research on L2 motivation in general and within Asian contexts in particular.

This book introduces an innovative collection of easy-to-use computer programs that have been developed to measure and model vocabulary knowledge. The book aims to help researchers discover new instruments for lexical analysis, and provides a theoretical framework in which studies with such tools could be conducted. Each of the programs comes with a short manual explaining how to use the program, an example of a published paper that uses the program and a set of questions that readers can develop into proper projects. The programs can be used in real research projects and have the potential to break new ground for research in L2 vocabulary acquisition. The book will be of great use to final year undergraduates and masters students in applied linguistics, second language acquisition, psycholinguistics and language testing and to PhD students doing research methods courses.

This book examines the concept of authentic English in today's world, where cultures are in constant interaction and the English language works as a binding agent for many cross-cultural exchanges. It offers a comprehensive review of decades of debate around authenticity in language teaching and learning and attempts to synthesise the complexities by presenting them as a continuum. This continuum builds on the work of eminent scholars and combines them within a flexible framework that celebrates the process of interaction whilst acknowledging the complexity and individual subjectivity of authenticity. Authenticity is approached as a complex dynamic construct that can only be understood by examining it from social, individual and contextual dimensions, in relation to actual people. Authenticity is a problem not just for language acquisition but one which affects us as individuals belonging to society.

This book introduces an approach to understanding and measuring working memory components and functions in second language learning, processing and development. It presents comprehensive, thorough and updated reviews of relevant literatures from cognitive sciences and applied linguistics. Drawing on multidisciplinary research, the book advocates a conceptual framework for integrating working memory theories with second language acquisition theories. An innovative theoretical model is also presented, which illuminates research studies investigating the distinctive roles of phonological and executive working memory as they relate to specific L2 learning domains, skills and processes. Theoretical and methodological implications of this integrative perspective are further elaborated and discussed within the specific realms of L2 task-based performance and language aptitude research.

This book explores how complex systems theory can contribute to the understanding of classroom language learner motivation through an extended examination of one particular, situated research project. Working from the lived experience of the participants, the study describes how action research methods were used to explore the dynamic conditions operating in a foreign language classroom in Japan. The book draws attention to the highly personalised and individual, yet equally co-formed nature of classroom foreign language learning motivation and to the importance of agency and emotions in language learning. It presents an extended illustration of the applicability of complex systems theory for research design and process in SLA and its narrative approach shines light upon the evolving nature of research and role of the researcher. The study will be a valuable resource for practitioners, researchers and postgraduate students interested in classroom language teaching and learning, especially those with a focus on motivation among learners.

This book evaluates a project where formal classroom learning of a second language was supplemented with informal, natural interactions with older native speakers of the target language, delivering a number of pedagogical and societal benefits. The authors introduce a model of intergenerational, intercultural encounters which aims to promote the use of community language resources; enrich the experiences of young learners; foster greater understanding between generations; break down cultural stereotypes; encourage appreciation of different cultures and enhance the quality of life and community engagement of older people with a bi/multilingual background. It draws on theories of language acquisition, discourse analysis and psychosocial perspectives to propose a model of language learning for students that can be used for any language or locality. It is therefore an essential resource for graduate students, researchers and language teachers as well as for education, aged and youth care policy makers, practitioners and community services workers who are interested in innovative language pedagogy.

This volume provides an unprecedented insight into current approaches to crosslinguistic influence (CLI). The collection investigates a range of themes including linguistic relativity, the possible contributions of neurolinguistics, the problem of cognitive development and the role of the frequency of structures in acquisition from distinct, overlapping and complementary perspectives. Chapters focusing on vocabulary, morphosyntactic categories, semantic structures, and phonetic and phonological structures feature in the volume, as do over 20 languages, in order to offer new insights into both theoretical and empirical issues in CLI, including the consequences of great or little similarity in structures between languages. The relevance of CLI research for teaching is discussed in a number of chapters, as is the phenomenon of multilingualism. The collection will appeal to researchers, graduate and postgraduate students, teachers and professionals interested in the field of CLI in SLA.

This volume provides an unprecedented insight into current approaches to crosslinguistic influence (CLI). The collection investigates a range of themes including linguistic relativity, the possible contributions of neurolinguistics, the problem of cognitive development and the role of the frequency of structures in acquisition from distinct, overlapping and complementary perspectives. Chapters focusing on vocabulary, morphosyntactic categories, semantic structures, and phonetic and phonological structures feature in the volume, as do over 20 languages, in order to offer new insights into both theoretical and empirical issues in CLI, including the consequences of great or little similarity in structures between languages. The relevance of CLI research for teaching is discussed in a number of chapters, as is the phenomenon of multilingualism. The collection will appeal to researchers, graduate and postgraduate students, teachers and professionals interested in the field of CLI in SLA.

This monograph investigates 15 L2 creative writers' social constructive power in identity constructions. Through interviews and think-aloud story writing sessions, the central study considers how L2 writer voices are mediated by the writers' autobiographical identities, namely, their sense of selves formulated by their previous language learning and literacy experiences. The inquiry takes the epistemological stance that L2 creative writing is simultaneously a cognitive construct and a social phenomenon and that these two are mutually inclusive. The study contributes to L2 creative writing research and L2 learner identity research and will be of benefit to researchers, language teachers and writing instructors who wish to understand creative writing processes in order to help develop their students' positive self-esteem, confidence, motivation and engagement with the L2.

Recent work has pointed to the need for a detection-based approach to transfer capable of discovering elusive crosslinguistic effects through the use of human judges and computer classifiers that can learn to predict learners' language backgrounds based on their patterns of language use. This book addresses that need. It details the nature of the detection-based approach, discusses how this approach fits into the overall scope of transfer research, and discusses the few previous studies that have laid the groundwork for this approach. The core of the book consists of five empirical studies that use computer classifiers to detect the native-language affiliations of texts written by foreign language learners of English. The results highlight combinations of language features that are the most reliable predictors of learners' language backgrounds.

Weaving It Together helps learners build reading and writing skills through relevant readings and carefully structured writing exercises. By balancing these two necessary competencies, learners seamlessly develop both language and academic skills.

How to improve your reading, listening and communication skills in ArabicDo you want to build on your Arabic reading, writing and listening skills? Improve your ability to communicate in this language? This is the book for you. Offering practical sessions and exercises, each module contains a wide range of authentic, contemporary texts so that you can practice your skills as they develop. Moving you from the intermediate to the advanced level of Arabic you will work through sessions on culture and society, the environment, education in the Arab world, global issues, media and communication, the economy, sports, and arts and literature. Each module follows the same structure, covering the essential skills of reading, grammar, vocabulary, listening, translation, writing and speaking.The book includes:A wide variety of drills to help you refine your reading, writing, speaking and listening skillsA key to exercises so you can check your progressA glossary of key Arabic termsAccess to online audio material to accompany the listening drills