This book investigates the issue of cloze-validity as a measure of second language reading comprehension. It starts off by making a distinction between general reading ability and the more specific reading comprehension followed by a thorough review of the related research on L2 reading comprehension and sorting out the confusion in the literature in this categorization. A comprehensive account of cloze procedure is presented discussing its origin, different versions, its use for teaching and testing purposes, as well the latest research on cloze as measures of readability, language proficiency and second language reading. The book includes studies conducted at several stages on validating cloze as a measure of reading and interview and questionnaire techniques are applied to investigate the validity of eight cloze tests, criterion reading tests, and other cloze and reading tests in general. Two new cloze tests, i.e. reader-centered cloze test and phrase cloze test, are also introduced and researched as measures of reading ability. The book concludes with suggestions for developing tests that can better measure reading comprehension in light of recent research insights on the complex and dynamic nature of reading. This book will appeal to researchers, lecturers and graduate and post-graduate students taking a course in Second Language Acquisition, Applied Linguistics, TESOL, Language Assessment, and Educational Measurement.

The dictionary expands on the original idea of Karttunen and Lockhart to map the usage of loans in Nahuatl, by using a much larger and diversified corpus of sources, and by including contextual use, missing in earlier studies. Most importantly, these sources enrich the colonial corpus with modern data - significantly expanding on our knowledge on language continuity and change.

Jennifer Webb collaborates with six expert writers to offer practical teaching strategies for the English classroom. With advice for primary to sixth form, it helps in the teaching of writing skills of distinct and specific forms, including: play-writing, novels, spoken poetry, written poetry, journalism and speech-writing.

This book investigates the macroacquisition of Chinese - its large-scale acquisition and adoption for various purposes by individuals, governments and organisations - and the implications of this process for the future of English as a global language. The author contextualises the macroacquisition of Chinese within the global ecology of languages, then analyses the factors responsible for the macroacquisition of Chinese, showing, in contrast to most academic and popular commentary, that a character-based writing system will not stop Chinese from becoming a global language. He then articulates three possible future scenarios: English remaining a dominant global language, English and Chinese both being global languages, and Chinese becoming a global language instead of English. The book concludes by outlining directions for further research on the acquisition and use of Chinese around the world. It will be of interest to students and scholars with an interest in English as a global language, Chinese as a second/foreign language, language education policy, and applied linguistics more generally.

The goal of this Nepali grammar is to provide a reference to the fundamental Nepali parts of speech, its word types, and its rules of word formation from the Nepali perspective. The book begins with a brief description of the Devanagari script and of common pronunciation rules. Then a brief history of the Nepali language is presented. The subsequent chapter on word types and origins is followed by a chapter on the parts of speech. The remainder of the text concerns Nepali word formation and its paradigms. Taken all together, the foundation in Nepali grammar is intended to be useful in conjunction with other learning materials, or literary works, in Nepali itself.

Recent years have witnessed a (re)surfacing of interest on the interaction of morphology and syntax. For many grammatical phenomena, it is not easy to draw a dividing line between syntactic and morphological structure. This has led to the assumption that syntax is the module responsible not only for deriving syntactically complex phrases but also for deriving morphologically complex items, both in inflection and word formation. There are however also good reasons to think that syntax is not involved in all morphological processes and that there are consistent areas of morphology that are independent from syntactic processes. This book presents a collection of papers where phenomena from Romance languages and varieties are analysed under contrasting views on how morphology and syntax interact. All the contributions follow the aim to investigate what the analysed phenomena tell us about their structural make-up and the grammatical processes involved.

This book analyses the development of academic literacy in low-proficiency users of English in the Middle East. It highlights the challenges faced by students entering undergraduate education in the region, and the strategies used by teachers to overcome them. The author focuses on a large-scale undergraduate teacher programme run in Oman by the University of Leeds, providing clear pointers both for future research and effective practice. He also explores the implications of his findings for countries beyond the Gulf Cooperation Council, demonstrating how international participation in UK HE could be much wider. This book will appeal to students and scholars with an interest in academic literacies and English for Academic Purposes.