Building Capacity promotes the vision that the teaching of African languages can best achieve its aim of boosting the economic and cultural development of the Africans if they are made to work in synergy with a revamping of the course contents of international languages that will be taught within the frame of a development-oriented literacy curriculum. Great emphasis is put on the oral skills in the use of African languages as they are to serve as a link between the community and the school for the ultimate revitalization of the positive aspects of African cultures in a world beset by globalization. The book is supplemented with a sample of texts in the appendix that are meant to be a bridge between formal texts taught in classrooms and literacy texts that can raise the genuine interests of the local populations in that they address their immediate needs. Among the possible topics language teachers are encouraged to explore in their classes are those concerning economic development, but also such issues as health, education, the environment, food security, and conflict resolution. "In the face of the growing interest in the use of African Languages by Africans as symbols of personal and cultural identity and as means of empowering the rural communities in the entreprise of national development,the need for a methodologically appropriate manual to guide the teaching and learning of African languages becomes urgent.This book is a timely response, predicated on a policy of the symbiotic use of African languages along with partner (foreign-official) languages, to attain a balanced level of economic and socio-cultural development.It is based on a compendium of well- thought-out principles geared towards a rapid acquisition of written and oral language skills that are congruent with and reflect the socio-cultural and economic concerns of the linguistic community." Beban Sammy Chumbow, Professor of Linguistics, University of Yaounde I "Among the numerous proposals in this book is the necessity for Africans, and I would add, for the communities of Asia and Latin America, to re-think the contents of their language courses and assign them an objective which aims at the integral development of their communities. It is indeed imperative that these courses reflect clear objectives of seeking social, cultural, and economic developments that harmonize with African, Asian, and Latin American values that are deep rooted in their respective various cultures." Jean-Pierre Angenot Professor of Linguistics, Federal University of Rondnia, Porto Velho, Brazil.

"Chinese Grammar Made Easy" presents instructors with innovative and classroom-tested techniques for teaching Chinese grammar. Its communicative, meaning-based approach helps teachers to engage students by bringing grammar into a practical, real-life context. As a reference for daily teaching, this book discusses 150 of the most fundamental and frequently used grammar points that students need to learn in order to communicate successfully. Each grammar point is accompanied by various learning activities to engage students and provide structured practice. Based on research conducted by a team of 25 experienced language teachers, "Chinese Grammar Made Easy" also offers Clear and concise explanations of grammar concepts, Step-by-step teaching instructions, A range of exercises to reinforce each grammar point.By providing pedagogical strategies, this book allows teachers to reflect on the effectiveness of their grammar instruction and to implement methods which fit the needs and interests of language learners. Jianhua Bai is professor of Chinese at Kenyon College and director of the Chinese School at Middlebury College.

Japanese Language Teaching examines the practical aspects of the acquisition of Japanese as a second language, underpinned by current theory and research. Each chapter examines the theory and practice of language teaching, and progresses to a consideration of the practical design of tasks for teaching. The final section applies theory and practice to an empirical case study, drawn from a classroom with Japanese as a second language. With its emphasis on practice underpinned by contemporary theory, this book will be of interest to postgraduates studying second language acquisition and applied linguistics.>

Language learning strategies have been a topic of research for roughly three decades. Broadly speaking, that research has focused on classroom tuition, predominantly at secondary level. Increasingly, however, language learning occurs in independent settings, whether at distance, on Institution-Wide Language Programmes (IWLPs), or in virtual environments. Success in independent language learning is achieved by autonomous individuals with a capacity for self-regulation. Yet we still know relatively little about the specific means they use to learn effectively, whether in terms of the affective strategies they employ to sustain motivation, the metacognitive strategies required for planning, monitoring and evaluating their learning, or the specific cognitive strategies applied to difficult learning tasks. These are all discussed and evaluated in Language Learning Strategies in Independent Settings.

Dewey's idea of Project-based Learning (PBL) was introduced into the field of second language education nearly two decades ago as a way to reflect the principles of student-centered teaching (Hedge, 1993). Since then, PBL has also become a popular language and literacy activity at various levels and in various contexts (see Beckett, 1999; Fried-Booth, 2002; Levis & Levis, 2003; Kobayashi, 2003; Luongo- Orlando, 2001; Mohan & Beckett, 2003; Weinstein, 2004). For example, it has been applied to teach various ESL and EFL skills around the world (e.g., Fried-Booth, 2002). More recently, PBL has been heralded as the most appropriate approach to teaching content-based second language education (Bunch, et al., 2001; Stoller, 1997), English for specific purposes (Fried-Booth, 2002), community-based language socialization (Weinstien, 2004), and critical and higher order thinking as well as problem-solving skills urged by the National Research Council (1999). Despite this emphasis, there is a severe shortage of empirical research on PBL and research-based frameworks and models based on sound theoretical guidance in general and second and foreign language education in particular (Thomas, 2000). Also missing from the second and foreign language education literature is systematic discussion of PBL work that brings together representative work, identifying obvious gaps, and guiding the field toward future directions. This, first of its kind, volume bridges these obvious gaps through the original work of international scholars from Canada, Israel, Japan, Singapore, and the US.

Experts and researchers in the field of ICT and language learning are increasingly emphasising that, once a new form of technology has become available, the starting point of research projects should not be the innovation itself but rather its role in the language learning process. This book is aimed at researchers and practitioners in the area of Information and Communications Technologies and language learning who want to integrate research and practice in this emerging field. The book deals with current developments in Europe, with the majority of the chapters focusing on the results of collaborative international projects. It includes two chapters on the place of ICT and language learning in the context of higher education and research in Europe, as well as studies on current developments in areas such as authoring tools, Human Language Technologies, corpora and concordancing, video-conferencing, e-mail tandem networks and the role of the Internet in language learning and teaching.

This book introduces beginning students and non-specialists to the diversity and richness of African languages. In addition to providing a solid background to the study of African languages, the book presents linguistic phenomena not found in European languages. A goal of this book is to stimulate interest in African languages and address the question: What makes African languages so fascinating? The orientation adopted throughout the book is a descriptive one, which seeks to characterize African languages in a relatively succinct and neutral manner, and to make the facts accessible to a wide variety of readers. The author s lengthy acquaintance with the continent and field experiences in western, eastern, and southern Africa allow for both a broad perspective and considerable depth in selected areas. The original examples are often the author s own but also come from other sources and languages not often referenced in the literature. This text also includes a set of sound files illustrating the phenomena under discussion, be they the clicks of Khoisan, talking drums, or the ideophones (words like English "lickety-split") found almost everywhere, which will make this book a valuable resource for teacher and student alike.

This book presents a collection of new and stimulating approaches to reading in a foreign language. The contributors to the volume all place reading at the heart of learning a foreign language and entering a foreign culture, and they consider issues and methods of language education from such diverse perspectives as cognitive theory, applied linguistics, technology as hermeneutic, history, literary, theory, and cross-cultural analysis. The contributors--teachers of French, German, Greek, Japanese, and Spanish--call for language teachers and theorists to refocus on the importance of reading skills. Emphasizing the process of reading as analyzing and understanding another culture, they document various practical methods, including the use of computer technology for enhancing language learning and fostering cross-cultural understanding.

The emergence of English as a global language, along with technological innovations and the growing need for learner autonomy, is changing language teaching rapidly and profoundly. With these changes come new demands and challenges for teaching education programs.

This authoritative collection of writings highlights some of the best work being done today in the United States and abroad to make communicative competence an attainable goal. The contributors examine what has come to be known as communicative language teaching, or CLT, from the perspectives of teachers and teacher educators.

The book documents current reform initiatives in Japan, the United States, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and continental Europe to provide a global perspective on language teaching for communicative competence. Four major themes recur throughout the volume: the multifaceted nature of language teaching; the highly contextualized nature of CLT; the futility of defining a "native speaker" in the postcolonial, postmodern world; and the overwhelming influence of high-stakes tests on language teaching. The book is a useful and valuable tool for language teachers, teacher educators, and policymakers.

Second Language Learning Theories is an introduction to the field of second language learning for students without a substantial background in linguistics. Drawing on the expertise of both a specialist in the teaching of second languages and a linguist specializing in second language acquisition, this textbook provides an up-to-date introductory survey of the most active and significant perspectives on the subject. In this new edition, the authors have revised and updated the text throughout to reflect the substantial developments that have taken place in the field in recent years. New studies have been incorporated as examples and there is more material on work in L2 phonology and lexis, as well as syntax. The evaluation sections in each chapter have been expanded and generally the book is rebalanced in favour of newer material. The first edition quickly established itself as the textbook of choice for students new to second language learning. The updates and revisions in this new edition ensure that the book remains as fresh, engaging and useful as the day it was first published.

The creation of language tests is-and should be-a craft that is accessible and doable not only by a few language test experts, but also by many others who are involved in second/foreign language education, say the authors of this clear and timely book. Fred Davidson and Brian Lynch offer language educators a how-to guide for creating tests that reliably measure exactly what they are intended to measure. Classroom teachers, language administrators, and professors of language testing courses will find in this book an easy and flexible approach to language testing as well as the tools they need to develop tests appropriate to their individual needs. Davidson and Lynch explain criterion-related language test development, a process that focuses on the early stages of test development when the criterion to be tested is defined, specifications are established, and items and tasks are written. This process helps clarify the description of what is being measured by a test and enables teachers to give input on test design in any instructional setting. Informed by extensive research in criterion-referenced measurement, this book invites all language educators to participate in the craft of test development and shows them how to go about it.

The Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) is a widely accepted instrument for assessing second and foreign language ability. It is used by the Foreign Language Institute, the Defense Language Institute, Educational Testing Service, the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, and at many universities in the United States. The Art of Non-Conversation examines the components of speaking ability and asks whether the OPI is a valid instrument for assessing them. Marysia Johnson applies the latest insights from discourse and conversational analysis to determine the nature of the OPI's communicative speech event and investigate its construct validity within Messick's definition of validity. She discusses models of speaking ability-several communicative competence models, an interactional competence model, and a model of spoken interaction based on Vygotsky's sociocultural theory of learning. Finally she proposes a new model to test language proficiency drawn from sociocultural theory, one that considers language ability to be reflective of the sociocultural and institutional contexts in which the language has been acquired.

How does classroom language learning take place? How does an understanding of second language acquisition contribute to language teaching? In answering these questions, Rod Ellis reviews a wide range of research on classroom learning, developing a theory of instructed second language acquisition that has significant implications for language teaching.

The early chapters of this book trace the attempts to explain classroom language learning in terms of general theory of learning (behaviorism) and the study of naturalistic language learning. The middle chapters document the attempts of researchers to enter the "black box" of the classroom in order to describe the teaching-learning behaviors that take place there and to investigate to what extent and in what ways instruction results in acquisition.

The book concludes with a theory of classroom language learning. This theory advances an explanation of the relationship between explicit and implicit linguistic knowledge and in so doing accounts for how both form-focused and meaning-focused instruction contribute to second language acquisition in the classroom.

The field of second language learning research has grown rapidly in recent years. Educators have become increasingly aware that pedagogical knowledge varies significantly from one subject domain to the next and that findings from educational research in one domain are not necessarily applicable to the next. Researchers in second language learning are adding to our understandings of secondlanguage specific pedagogy. There exists a need, therefore, for an outlet for these ever improving understandings of this content-specific pedagogy. The new book series, Research in Second Language Learning, will provide just such an outlet. The series invites articles from all methodological approaches to research. The series will promote a research-based approach to the decision-making process in second language teaching/learning.

Fifteen authors from the United States, Australia, and Germany contribute articles on issues such as the political agenda of higher institutions, language across the curriculum, service learning, adult education, artistic and aesthetic practice, intercultural awareness through electronic media, extra-curricular consultation, and language learning outreach, related to Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, French, German, and English as a foreign and second language.

The second volume of the series Advances in Foreign and Second Language Pedagogy is an introduction to the pedagogy of language learning in higher education focusing on learner motivation, classroom environments, relationships for learning, and the future of language education. The book reveals numerous links to language education on the secondary level, appealing to a wide audience.

Take advantage of the appeal and power of Caldecott award literature to extend and promote learning across the curriculum. In these three volumes the author demonstrates how to use award-winning books as springboards to science, social studies, and language arts learning in the library and classroom-and to expand student awareness and appreciation of illustration techniques. For each Caldecott title there is background information on the illustrations, curriculum connections, lesson plans, and support materials for teaching. Glandon also integrates Gardner's multiple intelligences with curriculum content. With a flexible, discovery approach, these activity units focus on student-centered, experiential, holistic, and authentic learning and they are ready for instant implementation. Targeted to primary grade objectives and abilities, the books include an array of individual projects and collaborative ones. They also foster collaborations between library media specialists and classroom teachers.

The first volume of the serial is dedicated to writing, merely for the reason that writing can still be considered in language education to be a skill to which little attention is paid, where as discourses on listening, reading, and especially speaking experienced major advances over the last two decades. With the intention to question this rather international tendency from as many as possible different perspectives, this book unifies articles from Switzerland and Italy, Denmark, Germany, and the US, dealing with French, Italian, German, and English as foreign or second languages in all levels of instruction. The aim of this first volume is mainly to encourage the understanding of an expanded function of writing in the field of language education, in theoretical terms and within the framework of classroom practice. Writing is understood here not only as a tool for recording knowledge but also as a means of developing it. Writing seen as such reaches beyond the realm of a foreign language, connecting the learners expertise of his/her native language and culture with the ones to be studied. When we acknowledge language as a social phenomenon, the potential uses of writing for learning across the curriculum are revealed.

This volume chronicles a revolution in our thinking about what makes students want to learn languages and what causes them to persist in that difficult and rewarding adventure. Topics in this book include the internal structures of and external connections with foreign language motivation; exploring adult language learning motivation, self-efficacy, and anxiety; comparing the motivation and learning strategies of students of Japanese and Spanish; and enhancing the theory of language learning motivation from many psychological and social perspectives.

This bibliography is a compilation of 15 short bibliographies published in an issue of the Journal of Second Language Writing from January 1993 to September 1997. The work focuses on theoretically grounded research reports and essays addressing issues in second and foreign language writing and writing instruction, containing 676 entries, each including a 50+ word summary intended to be non-evaluative in nature. The editors hope that this work will be a useful tool for developing theory, research, and instruction in second language writing.

Now you can use quality children's literature to teach traditional reading skills! Providing a balance between traditional and literature-based instruction, these books include stimulating and instructive lessons based on approximately 150 skills commonly found in basal readers. These lessons utilize a variety of strategies that can be applied to teaching myriad skills-from alphabet and alphabetization to word recognition skills. Each featured book includes a variety of activities and a list of related books. Semantic feature analysis, attribute charts, writing activities, problem solving, genre analysis, wordplay, and phonetic analysis are just some of the strategies covered. Wonderful tools for enlivening reading instruction, these resources reconcile the need to teach basic skills with the desire to use children's literature.

Now you can use quality children's literature to teach traditional reading skills! Providing a balance between traditional and literature-based instruction, these books include stimulating and instructive lessons based on approximately 150 skills commonly found in basal readers. These lessons utilize a variety of strategies that can be applied to teaching myriad skills-from alphabet and alphabetization to word recognition skills. Each featured book includes a variety of activities and a list of related books. Semantic feature analysis, attribute charts, writing activities, problem-solving, genre analysis, wordplay, and phonetic analysis are just some of the strategies covered. Wonderful tools for enlivening reading instruction, these resources reconcile the need to teach basic skills with the desire to use children's literature.

This volume focuses on the decision-making potential provided by second language performance assessments. The authors first situate performance assessment within a broader discussion of alternatives in language assessment and in educational assessment in general. They then discuss issues in performance assessment design, implementation, reliability, and validity. Finally, they present a prototype framework for second language performance assessment based on the integration of theoretical underpinnings and research findings from the task-based language teaching literature, the language testing literature, and the educational measurement literature. The authors outline test and item specifications, and they present numerous examples of prototypical language tasks. They also propose a research agenda focusing on the operationalization of second language performance assessments.

This volume provides an up-to-date and comprehensive reference guide to the key concepts, ideas, movements, and trends of applied linguistics for language teaching.

With over 300 hundred entries of varying length, the volume includes essential coverage of language, language learning, and language teaching. Written in an accessible style, the entries draw attention to the practical teaching implications of the ideas under discussion, and contain selected bibliographical information for further guided reading.

The volume will be invaluable to students of applied linguistics, language teaching, TESOL, and related subject areas.

It has long been an assumption in the field of English as a foreign language that those who speak the language as natives pronounce the way it should be taught. Most influential figures in the field have been outsiders, and the subject has accordingly not been really defined as the teaching of English as a foreign language, but as the teaching of English to foreigners: quite a different thing. This book discusses the designing of programs for learning which will take the different kinds of foreign-ness into account.