Pedagogical Reflections on Learning Languages in Instructed Settings is intended to provide the latest pedagogical reflections that derive from research in a variety of key areas within the discipline of language learning. Thus, this volume aims at helping practising language teachers to update their teaching methodology. The book has fifteen chapters that are grouped around five sections. The first section of the book includes three chapters, which outline past approaches to language learning and highlight advances in our understanding of how languages are likely to be learned and taught. These three chapters provide the theoretical grounding for the rest of the volume by discussing outstanding concepts in the language learning field, namely: those of eclecticism (Chapter 1), communication (Chapter 2), and learner autonomy (Chapter 3). The second section of the book contains three chapters, which explore new directions in the field that have recently caught the attention of language researchers and practitioners, namely: the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in language learning (Chapter 4) the use of language corpora (Chapter 5) and finally, the use of the portfolio as a new assessment tool responding to new pedagogical demands (Chapter 6). The third section of the book consists of three chapters, which discuss the role of learners' individual variables such as affect (Chapter 7), learning styles (Chapter 8), and learning strategies (Chapter 9), crucial for understanding the nature of language learning. The fourth section of the book has five chapters and provides insights into understanding the nature of the four language skills, that is to say, listening (Chapter 10), speaking (Chapter 11), reading (Chapter 12) and writing (Chapter 13). This section also addresses the issue of assessment with the aim of increasing awareness on the duality teaching/assessing and its pedagogical dimension (Chapter 14). The book concludes with the fifth section, which includes a single chapter, that pulls all aforementioned topics together and highlights connections to a student-centred approach, which involves a reformulation of language teachers' teaching practices (Chapter 15).

The exponential growth in the amount and complexity of information transmitted and shared on the Internet and the capabilities afforded by new information technologies result in the continuous emergence of new genres and new literacy practices that call for new models of genre analysis and new approaches to teaching literacy and language, where language learning autonomy has to take centre stage. Any pedagogical approach which seeks to develop autonomy in online language learning should also be concerned with the development of new literacies, with raising an awareness of digital texts and with the cognitive processes learners engage in when constructing meaning in hypertext. The purpose of this volume is to lay the foundations for an approach to online language learning which draws on the analysis of digital texts and of the practices and strategies involved in using such texts. With this aim in mind, this book incorporates and draws relations between research on digital genres, autonomy, electronic literacies and language learning tasks, combining theoretical reflections with pedagogical research. The chapters in this volume, written by researchers from different academic traditions, report research concerning digital genres, new literacy skills and the design of webtasks for effective language learning. These chapters will be useful resources for researchers and doctoral students interested in the development of autonomous language learning in digital environments.

This volume will appeal to anyone interested in knowing more about the fundamental building blocks of language: words. It brings together the fields of linguistics, neuroscience, psycholinguistics, speech-language pathology, and language education to present multifaceted perspectives on the topic of vocabulary. The theoretical and empirical contributions included consider some of the key questions facing the field, such as What is the mental lexicon?; What constitutes a word?; What are new and novel approaches to measuring and researching vocabulary?; and, What is the best way to teach vocabulary? This book will be useful to graduate students and scholars in the fields of theoretical linguistics, psycholinguistics, applied linguistics, adult and child language acquisition, and modern languages. In addition, it will appeal to language educators at various institutions, immigrant service specialists, school board officials, and study abroad consultants.

Dramatic Interactions is a collection of essays on the flourishing and interdisciplinary subject of teaching foreign languages, literatures, and cultures through theater. With rich examples from a variety of commonly and less commonly taught languages, this book affirms both the relevance and effectiveness of using theater for foreign language learning in the most comprehensive sense of the term. It includes innovative approaches to specific theatrical texts and addresses numerous aspects of foreign language learning such as oral proficiency and communication, intercultural competence, the role of affect and motivation in foreign language study, multiple literacies, regional variations and dialect, literary analysis and adaptation, and the overall liberating effects of verbal and non-verbal self-expression in the foreign language. Dramatic Interactions renders accessible, efficacious, and enjoyable the study of languages, literatures, and cultures through theater with the hope of inspiring and facilitating the greater incorporation of theatrical texts and techniques in foreign language courses at every level.

Language Teachers' Professional Knowledge Landscapes is a collection of fourteen narratives from teachers of different languages, at different school levels, in different contexts across Australia.This volume brings together not simply language teacher stories, but also more political stories of the problems associated with school programs and contexts. Highlighted through these stories are some of the major political issues in schools that impact language teachers' work, and their students' success in sustained language study. The book is conceptually framed by the work of Clandinin and Connelly (1996) and their notion of `levels' of stories told by teachers about their classrooms: the secret, the sacred and the cover stories. The term `professional knowledge landscape' is used to indicate how teachers can critically situate their work, and thereby understand it better.The collection includes the stories of two outstanding primary language educators, and a story of mixed success in a rural program in teaching the local Aboriginal language (Ngarrabul). There are stories of frustration with policy failures, particularly in supporting the learning of Asian languages. Many of the teacher narrators ask the confronting question: `What blocks language learning in Australia?' They offer the strategies which they have developed, that they see making a difference. Other narratives offer autoethnographic tracking of careers, for example, as a teacher of Latin and Classics, Japanese, French, Spanish, Russian, and of teachers' ongoing vigour and creativity in advocacy. A number of teachers examine their own identity story for the intercultural learning, which they then offer and extend in student learning. Consistently expressed, there is the need for teachers to take up individual responsibility, while still being strongly supported by their professional community: `It is us' who make the difference, one teacher concludes.Supported by a strong Foreword by Canadian scholar F. Michael Connelly, this ground-breaking collection of narratives represents a form of social research in providing critical illustrations of the issues needing attention for national language education enhancement. It is the only extended inquiry into language teaching in the context of an active policy initiative environment, and the first volume to address the language education landscape through the voices of active language teachers.

This publication brings together some of the papers presented at the 4th International Conference on Corpus Use and Learning to Translate (CULT), which took place at the University of Alicante on 27-29 May 2015, organised by the University's Department of Translation and Interpreting. Spanish and international researchers, translator trainers, and trainee and professional translators gathered at the conference in order to further their knowledge of corpus use, translation training and professional practice.The book includes contributions on the use of multilingual corpora in teaching scientific translation; trans-collocations in parallel corpora; teaching and learning the language of tourism as a Language for Specific Purposes (LSP); and a collocational analysis of verb work in a specialised corpus of English non-financial reports, among others.

This book exclusively focuses on visible and under-the-table power struggles with regards to aspects of communities, connections, cultures, and communication related to Chinese language teaching in US higher education in the past two decades. As long as there are diverse communities in a society, conflicts between different groups of people become inevitable, and these lead, in turn, to power struggles. Once there are conflicts or power struggles among various communities, problematic subtleties about connections to different communities, as well as comparisons and contrasts of social varieties and cultural legacies, indubitably ensue.

Pedagogical Reflections on Learning Languages in Instructed Settings is intended to provide the latest pedagogical reflections that derive from research in a variety of key areas within the discipline of language learning. Thus, this volume aims at helping practising language teachers to update their teaching methodology.The book has fifteen chapters that are grouped around five sections. The first section of the book includes three chapters, which outline past approaches to language learning and highlight advances in our understanding of how languages are likely to be learned and taught. These three chapters provide the theoretical grounding for the rest of the volume by discussing outstanding concepts in the language learning field, namely: those of eclecticism (Chapter 1), communication (Chapter 2), and learner autonomy (Chapter 3). The second section of the book contains three chapters, which explore new directions in the field that have recently caught the attention of language researchers and practitioners, namely: the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in language learning (Chapter 4) the use of language corpora (Chapter 5) and finally, the use of the portfolio as a new assessment tool responding to new pedagogical demands (Chapter 6). The third section of the book consists of three chapters, which discuss the role of learners' individual variables such as affect (Chapter 7), learning styles (Chapter 8), and learning strategies (Chapter 9), crucial for understanding the nature of language learning. The fourth section of the book has five chapters and provides insights into understanding the nature of the four language skills, that is to say, listening (Chapter 10), speaking (Chapter 11), reading (Chapter 12) and writing (Chapter 13). This section also addresses the issue of assessment with the aim of increasing awareness on the duality teaching/assessing and its pedagogical dimension (Chapter 14). The book concludes with the fifth section, which includes a single chapter, that pulls all aforementioned topics together and highlights connections to a student-centred approach, which involves a reformulation of language teachers' teaching practices (Chapter 15).

In the past, the Middle East and the so-called Muslim world used to be beacons of learning and critical thought. Although historical variables-such as conquest, internal conflict, and colonization-demoted their position on the global stage, changes are now in the offing. In these interesting times, a growing number of educators, thinkers and visionaries are trying both to find and to generate new approaches to the past, present, and future of the region.This book is a collection of articles which reflect on various aspects related to education and society in the Middle East and North Africa (also known as the MENA region), their peoples and educational processes. It provides a platform for people to join the global conversation and to contribute to it with data which are relevant to regional concerns, research and practices. This is necessary because many of the theories and research findings which are still being used to understand the region were generated elsewhere and, despite their lack of regional representativeness, were generalized as the most trustworthy interpretive tools across the world. Hence, there is a need for the world to open up to the voices from the MENA region.

A Reference Grammar for Teaching Chinese - Syntax and Discourse presents a comprehensive guide on the major issues in teaching Chinese as a foreign language. Through this reference work readers will learn all basic structures of the language, focusing on the interactions of syntactic properties, semantic nuances, and discourse contexts. The work contains ample examples and jargon-free explanations to account for some of the most nagging problems in teaching Chinese. At the heart of this reference resource are the concrete and efficient ways to help researchers in both fields of language pedagogy and Chinese linguistics as well as learners of the language.