This volume contains twelve papers presented at the 26th International Conference of the Croatian Applied Linguistics Society, which was held at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Zagreb in 2012. The articles deal with the way in which information appears in language, specifically with the relationship between meaning and structure, and the way it is constructed by language users, particularly in foreign language learning and teaching situations. All the articles illustrate the claim that investigating language and its information value hinges on language structure, meaning and sociocognitive factors. The analysis of one cannot be complete without analyzing the other two, based on a functional perspective.

Dieser Band enthalt 73 Beitrage in deutscher und englischer Sprache, die wahrend des 42. Linguistischen Kolloquiums zum Thema Sprachenvielfalt und Sprachenlernen: Neue Wege zur Literalitat im September 2007 in Rhodos gehalten wurden. Autorinnen und Autoren aus Europa, Kanada, Afrika und Australien setzen sich - auch interdisziplinar - mit Fragestellungen der Linguistik, Didaktik, UEbersetzungswissenschaft, des Bilingualismus oder der Bildungspolitik auseinander und beleuchten das Thema aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven. Dank dieser Vielfaltigkeit ist das Spektrum der Schwerpunkte, Fragestellungen und Erkenntnisse weit gefasst und in vielfacher Hinsicht von Bedeutung fur die zukunftige Forschung. This volume contains 73 contributions (written in English or German) presented at the 42nd Linguistics Colloquium held in Rhodes in September 2007 on the topic Language Diversity and Language Learning: New Paths to Literacy. Contributors from Europe, Canada, Africa and Australia address issues central to the fields of Linguistics, Language Teaching Methodology, Translation Studies, Bilingualism or Educational Policy, shedding light on the Colloquium's topic from different perspectives and often in an interdisciplinary approach. Thanks to this diversity the spectrum of the foci, questions raised and insights gained is wide and in many respects of importance for future research.

This book applies social theory to curriculum design and sets out a program for language curriculum renewal for the 21st century. It includes many examples of text-based curricula and describes a plan for curriculum renewal based on texts as the unit of analysis for planning, for teaching and for assessment. Underpinned by Halliday's semiotic theory of language, the book combines the theory of language as a resource for meaning-making with learning language as learning to mean. The curriculum design constructs curriculum around social practices and their texts rather than presenting language as grammatical and lexical objects. This work will provide teachers, teacher educators and curriculum planners with a curriculum model for teaching children and adults in different contexts from preschool to adult education as well as serving as a practical guide for students.

Language teachers' competencies in computer-assisted language learning (CALL) are a crucial factor affecting their own implementation of CALL. However, there is still a concern that many language teachers are not adequately prepared to make effective use of CALL or to identify and evaluate potential CALL solutions. This can be the result of many different factors and raises the question of how to train teachers to develop their CALL knowledge and skills to a greater degree. The discussion of approaches to training language teachers in the use of technology adopted in areas of Australia, the UK and the US provides valuable insights for those already involved in this area, and inspiration for those who have some interest in carrying out this kind of training, but as yet have little or no experience. This book explores the current status of CALL teacher education and discusses issues and challenges CALL teacher educators face in their own contexts. Specifically, it looks at postgraduate CALL courses offered at different universities to find ways of improving CALL teacher training. It represents the first overview of a topic that is relevant to most postgraduate courses in Applied Linguistics or TESOL across the globe. The use of technology for language learning and teaching is increasingly common but, as is so often the case, training for teachers in how to use that technology remains limited, to a large extent by lack of expertise among trainers.

What does best practice in online education look like? How can educators make use of the affordances offered by online environments to bring out the best in the children they teach? These questions are answered in this new textbook, written with experienced teachers, novice educators and teacher educators in mind. Meskill and Anthony offer a wealth of examples of what successful online teaching looks like, and provide a rich source of practical, conversation-based strategies for optimizing online learning. This book will inspire anyone teaching or planning to teach fully online, or in a blended or hybrid format, by demonstrating how well constructed online conversations constitute powerful teaching.

This Handbook provides a state-of-the-art account of research in language policy and planning (LPP). Through a critical examination of LPP, the Handbook offers new direction for a field in theoretical and methodological turmoil as a result of the socio-economic, institutional, and discursive processes of change taking place under the conditions of Late Modernity. Late Modernity refers to the widespread processes of late capitalism leading to the selective privatization of services (including education), the information revolution associated with rapidly changing statuses and functions of languages, the weakening of the institutions of nation-states (along with the strengthening of non-state actors), and the fragmentation of overlapping and competing identities associated with new complexities of language-identity relations and new forms of multilingual language use. As an academic discipline in the social sciences, LPP is fraught with tensions between these processes of change and the still-powerful ideological framework of modern nationalism. It is an exciting and energizing time for LPP research. This Handbook propels the field forward, offering a dialogue between the two major historical trends in LPP associated with the processes of Modernity and Late Modernity: the focus on continuity behind the institutional policies of the modern nation-state, and the attention to local processes of uncertainty and instability across different settings resulting from processes of change. The Handbook takes great strides toward overcoming the long-standing division between "top-down" and "bottom-up" analysis in LPP research, setting the stage for theoretical and methodological innovation. Part I defines alternative theoretical and conceptual frameworks in LPP, emphasizing developments since the ethnographic turn, including: ethnography in LPP; historical-discursive approaches; ethics, normative theorizing, and transdisciplinary methods; and the renewed focus on socio-economic class. Part II examines LPP against the background of influential ideas about language shaped by the institutions of the nation-state, with close attention to the social position of minority languages and specific communities facing profound language policy challenges. Part III investigates the turmoil and tensions that currently characterize LPP research under conditions of Late Modernity. Finally, Part IV presents an integrative summary and directions for future LPP research.

This volume builds on Fortune and Tedick's 2008 Pathways to Multilingualism: Evolving Perspectives on Immersion Education and showcases the practice and promise of immersion education through in-depth investigations of program design, implementation practices, and policies in one-way, two-way and indigenous programs. Contributors present new research and reflect on possibilities for strengthening practices and policies in immersion education. Questions explored include: What possibilities for program design exist in charter programs for both two-way and indigenous models? How do studies on learner outcomes lead to possibilities for improvements in program implementation? How do existing policies and practices affect struggling immersion learners and what possibilities can be imagined to better serve such learners? In addressing such questions, the volume invites readers to consider the possibilities of immersion education to enrich the language development and educational achievement of future generations of learners.

Do you want to communicate easily and freely in Swedish? Master Swedish grammar and broaden your vocabulary with your very own Swedish Tutor. This contemporary interactive workbook features 200 activities across a range of grammar and vocabulary points with clear goals, concise explanations, and real-world tasks. By studying and practicing Swedish grammar you'll understand how the language really works and be able to speak Swedish with clarity and ease. What will I learn? The Swedish Tutor: Grammar and Vocabulary Workbook covers a comprehensive range of the most useful and frequent grammar and vocabulary in Swedish. You can follow along unit by unit, or dip in and dip out to address your weak areas. As you progress, you will be introduced to new vocabulary and combine it with the grammar to complete extensive exercises. You will then practice the language through authentic reading and writing practice. You will achieve a solid upper intermediate level* of Swedish grammar. Is this course for me? The Swedish Tutor: Grammar and Vocabulary Workbook can be used as a standalone course or as a complement to any other Swedish course. It offers extensive practice and review of essential grammar points and vocabulary and skills building. The personal tutor element points out exceptions and gives tips to really help you perfect your Swedish. What do I get? This Swedish workbook offers a range of clear and effective learning features: -200 activities across a range of grammar and vocabulary points -Unique visuals and infographics for extra context and practice -Personal tutor hints and tips to help you to understand language rules and culture points -Learn to learn section offers tips and advice on how to be a good language learner 20 short learning units each contain: -communication goals to guide your studies -grammar explanations with embedded exercises -vocabulary presentations and activities -reading and writing sections to consolidate your learning What other courses are available? For further study and practice, see Get Started in Swedish (ISBN 9781444175202) and Complete Swedish: Teach Yourself (ISBN 9781444195101). Rely on Teach Yourself, trusted by language learners for over 75 years.

The History of the English Language has been a standard university course offering for over 150 years. Yet relatively little has been written about teaching a course whose very title suggests its prodigious chronological, geographic, and disciplinary scope. In the nineteenth century, History of the English Language courses focused on canonical British literary works. Since these early curricula were formed, the English language has changed, and so have the courses. In the twenty-first century, instructors account for the growing prominence of World Englishes as well as the English language's transformative relationship with the internet and social media. Approaches to Teaching the History of the English Language addresses the challenges and circumstances that the course's instructors and students commonly face. The volume reads as a series of "master classes" taught by experienced instructors who explain the pedagogical problems that inspired resourceful teaching practices. Although its chapters are authored by seasoned teachers, many of whom are preeminent scholars in their individual fields, the book is designed for instructors at any career stage-beginners and veterans alike. The topics addressed in Approaches to Teaching the History of the English Language include: the unique pedagogical dynamic that transpires in language study; the course's origins and relevance to current university curricula; scholarly approaches that can offer an abiding focus in a semester-long course; advice about navigating the course's formidable chronological ambit; ways to account for the language's many varieties; and the course's substantial and pedagogical relationship to contemporary multimedia platforms. Each chapter balances theory and practice, explaining in detail activities, assignments, or discussion questions ready for immediate use by instructors.

Second Language Testing for Student Evaluation and Classroom Research and its accompanying Student Workbook are introductory?level resources for classroom teachers of all levels of experience, and early?career graduate students in applied linguistics, TESOL, and second/foreign language teaching programs. The book gives a balance between practice and theory for student evaluation, and also aims for readers to use testing to connect to classroom research and to their own teaching. Indeed, Second Language Testing for Student Evaluation and Classroom Research aims at self?discovery and empowerment for readers, even as second language testing as a field undergoes major shifts in scope and areas of concern. Second Language Testing offer a strong basis for readers who wish to analyze and improve their own classroom tests, and for readers who wish to evaluate standardized tests they are required to use, or are thinking of using. We work with the general idea, "OK, now that I know test X has these strengths and weaknesses, what do I do?" Or, "Alright here are students' scores, now how do I use them in my teaching?" At the same time our book provides more in?depth treatments of key testing topics for those readers who want to know "Why?" and "How?" "Why these terms?" "Why this or that analysis?" "Why does it work?" "How does it work?" "What do these numbers mean?" "How do I use them and how do I explain them to my students, my colleagues, my supervisors?" Second Language Testing for Student Evaluation and Classroom Research includes five Appendices for those readers whose interests continue into more advanced areas. Our information and observations on issues such as rater training (Appendix B) are current and discerning, and our Reference section and Glossary would be valued by any advanced testing practitioner or researcher. Second Language Testing is useful to readers at varied levels of engagement, at their choice.

An argument that agreement and agreementless languages are unified under an expanded view of grammatical features including both phi-features and certain discourse configurational features. Much attention in theoretical linguistics in the generative and Minimalist traditions is concerned with issues directly or indirectly related to movement. The EPP (extended projection principle), introduced by Chomsky in 1981, appeared to coincide with morphological agreement, and agreement came to play a central role as the driver of movement and other narrow-syntax operations. In this book, Shigeru Miyagawa continues his investigation into a computational equivalent for agreement in agreementless languages such as Japanese. Miyagawa extends his theory of Strong Uniformity, introduced in his earlier book, Why Agree? Why Move? Unifying Agreement-Based and Discourse-Configurational Languages (MIT Press). He argues that agreement and agreementless languages are unified under an expanded view of grammatical features including both phi-features and discourse configurational features of topic and focus. He looks at various combinations of these two grammatical features across a number of languages and phenomena, including allocutive agreement, root phenomena, topicalization, "why" questions, and case alternation.

What is a 'contemporary' understanding of literacy practices? How can 'literacy' be explained and situated? This book addresses literacy practices research, understanding it as both material and spatial, based in homes and communities, as well as in formal educational settings. It addresses a need to update the work done on theoretical literacy models, with the last major paradigms such as critical literacies and multiliteracies developed a decade ago. Kate Pahl draws on case studies to highlight experiences alternate from the traditional representations of literacy. She argues that the affordances of home and familiar spaces offer fertile ground for meaning-making. These resultant literacies are multimodal and linked to space, place and community. An important evaluative resource, this book details a range of methodologies for further researching literacy, describing ethnographic, visual, participatory and ecological approaches, together with connective ethnographies. This volume will appeal to academics and professions in literacy studies and language and education.

This book aims to tackle one of the most controversial and important linguistic, educational and societal debates in contemporary Europe. English is growing rapidly within, and spreading across, an increasing number of areas of society. This development is influenced by actions taken by national and supranational decision-makers, as well as global forces outside the control of any one state or political union. Europe's founding principle of respecting and fostering diversity and equality of cultures and languages is being affected by the growing role of English across European countries, creating a de facto linguistic hierarchy and consequently a potential cultural hierarchy. The essays collected here aim to examine existing debates and stimulate further discourse on the nurturing of multilingualism in Europe and the concomitant acquisition of English. By bringing together contributions focusing on multiple European countries and regions by researchers from a variety of linguistic and cultural backgrounds, this volume presents a snapshot of the current relationship between multilingualism and English and explores the challenges generated by this situation.

This volume presents the results of two tasks examining the acquisition of plosive voicing contrasts in L2 English by college students with Cypriot Greek (CG) backgrounds. The tasks focus on the different factors affecting plosive identification and the types of errors involving plosives. With respect to the first issue, the phonetic perception of plosives turns out to be better in voiceless consonants compared to their voiced counterparts, thus providing evidence for the importance of the voicing contrast factor. With respect to the second issue, the results point to the same direction since it appears that L2 users performed significantly better in voiceless plosives. It is also indicated that they were able to perceive voiced plosives but they treated such instances as a /nasal+voiced plosive/sequence (prenasalised plosives). Therefore, the overall results seem to agree mostly with the speech perception approach suggesting that voiced plosives are realised differently in CG while the difficulties of the L2 CG users with plosives seem to be attributed to VOT differences between the L1 and the L2.

This volume focuses on computer- and digitally-assisted language learning in all of its forms: technology-enhanced language learning, network-based language learning, mobile-assisted language learning and so on, in close relation to the topic of sustainability. How can these technologies and techniques be implemented in a sustainable and repeatable way? The book covers a wide range of areas in terms of this "sustainability". These include: (1) education (teacher/learner training) (2) normalisation (integration) (3) systems (reliability, support, development) (4) mobility (mobile-assisted language leaning) (5) innovation (trends, research) The volume samples research and practice in CALL from around the world, organised into sections. It has an introduction and a conclusion written by the editors (Ana Gimeno, Mike Levy, Francoise Blin and David Barr) which covers the state of the art at the moment and directions it is likely to take in the future.