The monograph is devoted to the notion of strategic intervention and its application in the foreign language classroom, in particular with reference to teaching grammar structures. The first four chapters, which are theoretical in nature, address such concepts as form-focused instruction, language learning strategies and strategies-based instruction. The last chapter provides insight into the results of a study investigating the grammar learning strategies employed by advanced learners of English. Additionally, the chapter presents the views of foreign language teachers on the idea of introducing strategy training in the foreign language classroom. The book closes with the discussion concerning the implementation of strategy training and its value in teaching target language grammar.

This book uses a narrative-oriented approach to shed light on the processes of identity construction and development among Japanese university students of English. The research highlights the instrumental agency of individuals in responding to and acting upon the social environment, and in developing, maintaining and/or reconstructing their identities as L2 users. The study offers unique insights into the role of experience, emotions, social and environmental affordances in shaping their personal orientations to English and self-perceptions as English learner-users. It also examines individuals’ responses to these factors and discusses fluctuations in their motivations. The additional value of this book lies in its detailed account of methodological procedures, challenges and ways to overcome obstacles encountered when undertaking qualitative longitudinal studies.

Tensions and conflicts related to linguistic identity and security are inevitable - even necessary - in liberal democracies. However, if conflicts related to language and identity negatively impact democratic participation, and lead to social fragmentation, civic withdrawal, and lack of trust in societal institutions, then the political system itself may become suspect and unstable. Written by experts from the fields of sociolinguistics, bilingual studies, political science/philosophy, and education, this volume provides a comprehensive picture of the current political, cultural and social factors impacting language policy in the United States and Canada. The chapters cover many aspects of social life in North America, such as immigration, bilingual education, heritage languages, and linguistic identity, and explore the challenges and set-backs, along with the many positive steps taken in recent years to advance the values of inclusion amidst diversity in a variety of contexts and domains in the United States and Canada.

This handbook explores multiple facets of the study of word classes, also known as parts of speech or lexical categories. These categories are of fundamental importance to linguistic theory and description, both formal and functional, and for both language-internal analyses and cross-linguistic comparison. The volume consists of five parts that investigate word classes from different angles. Chapters in the first part address a range of fundamental issues including diversity and unity in word classes around the world, categorization at different levels of structure, the distinction between lexical and functional words, and hybrid categories. Part II examines the treatment of word classes across a wide range of contemporary linguistic theories, such as Cognitive Grammar, Minimalist Syntax, and Lexical Functional Grammar, while the focus of Part III is on individual word classes, from major categories such as verb and noun to minor ones such as adpositions and ideophones. Part IV provides a number of cross-linguistic case studies, exploring word classes in families including Afroasiatic, Sinitic, Mayan, Austronesian, and in sign languages. Chapters in the final part of the book discuss word classes from the perspective of various sub-disciplines of linguistics, ranging from first and second language acquisition to computational and corpus linguistics. Together, the contributions showcase the importance of word classes for the whole discipline of linguistics, while also highlighting the many ongoing debates in the areas and outlining fruitful avenues for future research.

This text draws together the principal issues related to the identification of language difficulties in pre-school children. Factors closely associated with the development of language such as cognitive skills, play, behaviour and hearing are discussed. The basic principles underlying early identification, the role of the parent and the issue of early identification within the context of public health are also included.;To reflect the range of related professionals involved with language impaired children, there are chapters written by a health visitor, a psychiatric social worker and speech and language therapists specializing in hearing loss. This book should be a useful reference for all those professionals working with children in the health and education setting.;This book should be of interest to practising and student speech therapists, nurses, health visitors, paediatric nurses, nursery leaders, play group leaders, clinical medical officers, educational and clinical psychologists.

This book brings together phonologists working in different areas to explore key questions relating to phonological primitives, the basic building blocks that are at the heart of phonological structure and over which phonological computations are carried out. Whether these units are referred to as features, elements, gestures, or something else entirely, the assumptions that are made about them are fundamental to modern phonological theory. Even so, there is limited consensus on the specifics of those assumptions. The chapters in this book present differing perspectives on phonological primitives and their implications, addressing some of the most pressing issues in the field such as how many features there are; whether those features are privative or binary; and whether segments need to be specified for all features. The studies cover a wide range of methodologies and domains, including experimental work, fieldwork, language acquisition, theory-internal concerns, and many more, and will be of interest to phoneticians and phonologists from all theoretical backgrounds.

This book unites a range of emerging topics in the burgeoning transdisciplinary fields of second language acquisition and interculturality in a study abroad context. It explores key issues, trends and approaches within each strand and how the strands relate to one another, painting a big picture of the diversity and complexity underpinning second language acquisition in a study abroad context. The chapters highlight themes such as social networks, input and interaction issues, learner identities and study abroad in lingua franca contexts, while also presenting other themes spanning the breadth of second language acquisition and interculturality research, such as individual differences and linguistic development. This comprehensive and cohesive volume showcases the latest innovative research using quantitative, qualitative and mixed method approaches across a range of source and target language learner cohorts, and highlights emerging themes and directions for future research.

Berwick and Chomsky draw on recent developments in linguistic theory to offer an evolutionary account of language and humans' remarkable, species-specific ability to acquire it. "A loosely connected collection of four essays that will fascinate anyone interested in the extraordinary phenomenon of language." -New York Review of Books We are born crying, but those cries signal the first stirring of language. Within a year or so, infants master the sound system of their language; a few years after that, they are engaging in conversations. This remarkable, species-specific ability to acquire any human language-"the language faculty"-raises important biological questions about language, including how it has evolved. This book by two distinguished scholars-a computer scientist and a linguist-addresses the enduring question of the evolution of language. Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky explain that until recently the evolutionary question could not be properly posed, because we did not have a clear idea of how to define "language" and therefore what it was that had evolved. But since the Minimalist Program, developed by Chomsky and others, we know the key ingredients of language and can put together an account of the evolution of human language and what distinguishes us from all other animals. Berwick and Chomsky discuss the biolinguistic perspective on language, which views language as a particular object of the biological world; the computational efficiency of language as a system of thought and understanding; the tension between Darwin's idea of gradual change and our contemporary understanding about evolutionary change and language; and evidence from nonhuman animals, in particular vocal learning in songbirds.

In many countries, including Belgium, English is pervasively present in public life: it is the number one foreign language in music, computergames and television programmes. As a result, children are extensively exposed to English long before they get their first English class in school. This volume questions to what extent this massive exposure to English actually leads to language acquisition by children prior to instruction of English in school. In other words: is there such a thing as media-induced second language acquisition?

Highlighting marginalized but significant perspectives about the sociopolitical essence of English language tests and testing processes worldwide, this book explores the social considerations of testing theories and practices from a critical perspective. Investigating concerns surrounding power inequalities, The Sociopolitics of English Language Testing takes a socially-situated view of language assessment, bringing sociopolitical understandings of language teaching, learning, and assessment to the forefront in the field. Within the broader discussion of the politics of test use, an international team of language and education experts address the issues of ideology, diversity, power, and dominance in English language testing. Through socially-sensitive theoretical as well as empirical discussion and investigation of English language testing, this book offers valuable insights, not only to applied linguists and the language education community who have focused on positivistic and cognitively-oriented conceptions of language testing, but to anyone who wishes to venture beyond the traditional bounds of the field.

To carry out his investigations, Bruner went to "the clutter of life at home," the child's own setting for learning, rather than observing children in a "contrived video laboratory." For Bruner, language is learned by using it. An central to its use are what he calls "formats," scriptlike interactions between mother and child in short, play and games. What goes on in games as rudimentary as peekaboo or hide-and-seek can tell us much about language acquisition.

But what aids the aspirant speaker in his attempt to use language? To answer this, the author postulates the existence of a Language Acquisition Support System that frames the interactions between adult and child in such a way as to allow the child to proceed from learning how to refer to objects to learning to make a request of another human being. And, according to Bruner, the Language Acquisition Support System not only helps the child learn "how to say it" but also helps him to learn "what is canonical, obligatory, and valued among those to whom he says it." In short, it is a vehicle for the transmission of our culture."

This book approaches the empirical validation of a popular method of assessing lexical knowledge – the yes/no vocabulary test or lexical decision task – from an interdisciplinary perspective. Each of its chapters sets out a distinct phase of the research along the development of a business English vocabulary test. The book offers a linguistic discussion of business English vocabulary, a psycholinguistic discussion of what aspects of linguistic knowledge and (meta)cognitive processing mechanisms are involved in completing the task, a psychometric-methodological discussion of how these aspects are measured and scored, and an applied discussion of the usefulness of the test. Thus, it is of interest to researchers, students, and professionals from a range of disciplines.

An examination of the relation between concepts and experiencing. This work examines the edge of awareness, where language emerges from non-language. In moving back and forth between what is already verbalized and what is as yet unarticulated, Eugene Gendlin shows how experiencing functions in the transitions between one formulation and the next. A whole array of more than logical ""characteristics"" enables us to examine as well as to employ this new kind of thinking which is not merely conceptual because it begins from the intricacy of felt meaning and returns to it again and again.

An investigation of how children balance rules and exceptions when they learn languages. All languages have exceptions alongside overarching rules and regularities. How does a young child tease them apart within just a few years of language acquisition? In this book, drawing an economic analogy, Charles Yang argues that just as the price of goods is determined by the balance between supply and demand, the price of linguistic productivity arises from the quantitative considerations of rules and exceptions. The learner postulates a productive rule only if it results in a more efficient organization of language, with the number of exceptions falling below a critical threshold. Supported by a wide range of cases with corpus evidence, Yang's Tolerance Principle gives a unified account of many long-standing puzzles in linguistics and psychology, including why children effortlessly acquire rules of language that perplex otherwise capable adults. His focus on computational efficiency provides novel insight on how language interacts with the other components of cognition and how the ability for language might have emerged during the course of human evolution.

A new edition of a foundational work of cognitive science that outlines a theory of the development of specifically human higher mental functions. Since it was introduced to the English-speaking world in 1962, Lev Vygotsky's Thought and Language has become recognized as a classic foundational work of cognitive science. Its 1962 English translation must certainly be considered one of the most important and influential books ever published by the MIT Press. In this highly original exploration of human mental development, Vygotsky analyzes the relationship between words and consciousness, arguing that speech is social in its origins and that only as children develop does it become internalized verbal thought. In 1986, the MIT Press published a new edition of the original translation by Eugenia Hanfmann and Gertrude Vakar, edited by Vygotsky scholar Alex Kozulin, that restored the work's complete text and added materials to help readers better understand Vygotsky's thought. Kozulin also contributed an introductory essay that offered new insight into Vygotsky's life, intellectual milieu, and research methods. This expanded edition offers Vygotsky's text, Kozulin's essay, a subject index, and a new foreword by Kozulin that maps the ever-growing influence of Vygotsky's ideas.

This volume presents a survey of research in developmental linguistics, illustrating the fruitful interaction between comparative syntax and language acquisition. The contributors analyse a well defined range of acquisition data, illustrating the difference between child and adult grammar.