Winner of the SAGE/ILTA Book Award 2016 Re-examining Language Testing explores ideas that form the foundations of language testing and assessment. The discussion is framed within the philosophical and social beliefs that have forged the practices endemic in language education and policy today. From historical and cultural perspectives, Glenn Fulcher considers the evolution of language assessment, and contrasting claims made about the nature of language and human communication, how we acquire knowledge of language abilities, and the ethics of test use. The book investigates why societies use tests, and the values that have driven changes in practice over time. The discussion is presented within an argument that an Enlightenment inspired view of human nature and advancement is most suited to a progressive, tolerant, and principled theory of language testing and validation. Covering key topics such as measurement, validity, accountability and values, Re-examining Language Testing provides a unique and innovative analysis of the ideas and social forces that shape the practice of language testing. It is an essential read for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of Applied Linguistics and Education. Professionals working in language testing and language teachers will also find this book invaluable.

Winner of the SAGE/ILTA Book Award 2016 Re-examining Language Testing explores ideas that form the foundations of language testing and assessment. The discussion is framed within the philosophical and social beliefs that have forged the practices endemic in language education and policy today. From historical and cultural perspectives, Glenn Fulcher considers the evolution of language assessment, and contrasting claims made about the nature of language and human communication, how we acquire knowledge of language abilities, and the ethics of test use. The book investigates why societies use tests, and the values that have driven changes in practice over time. The discussion is presented within an argument that an Enlightenment inspired view of human nature and advancement is most suited to a progressive, tolerant, and principled theory of language testing and validation. Covering key topics such as measurement, validity, accountability and values, Re-examining Language Testing provides a unique and innovative analysis of the ideas and social forces that shape the practice of language testing. It is an essential read for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of Applied Linguistics and Education. Professionals working in language testing and language teachers will also find this book invaluable.

This book presents a selection of papers on teaching English as a foreign language and the role of language education in human development. As thinking skills rely on language, language education should exceed utilitarian and everyday communicative needs and should be the basis for developing other school subjects. The book provides practical suggestions for language teaching, for the development of logical thinking and the understanding of the linguistic relationship between the first and the second languages in a historical perspective.

Talking About Language Assessment is the first book to take an interview-based approach to the history of language assessment. This collection consists of interviews originally featured in Language Assessment Quarterly with renowned language assessment experts. Contextualized with commentary by the editor, the articles in this text cover many of the essential areas of language testing and assessment including assessment design, validation argument, epistemological issues in research, and language assessment policy. This text is a valuable compilation on the history of language assessment, and an ideal resource for researchers and students in the field of language testing and assessment.

Pragmatic competence plays a key role in intercultural communication, particularly for students studying in a target community. This book investigates the effect of study abroad on second language learners' productive and receptive pragmatic competences, as well as their cognitive processes during speech act production. It employs a variety of research instruments, both quantitative and qualitative, to explore learners' pragmatic development over one year. The inclusion of a control group is a methodological strength of the longitudinal study, many such studies often not including a control group. In addition, the study longitudinally examines learners' cognitive processes during study abroad with innovative and insightful analyses. The book makes an important contribution to second language pragmatics with regard to developmental changes in both speech act production and perception during such processes.

The past two decades have created quantitatively higher and qualitatively different demands for foreign language skills. Learners' needs, expectations and contexts of language use have undergone radical and far-reaching transformations. This collection of essays by experienced educators, teacher trainers and researchers from diverse linguistic, cultural and professional settings offers a fresh perspective on the aspects and ways of teaching skills which are crucial to contemporary language instruction, especially at the more advanced stages, but which have oftentimes been unjustly neglected in the classroom. The book discusses issues ranging from approaches to teaching, contexts of instruction, testing and assessment to curriculum development and technology in the classroom.

This book addresses the issue of using texts of culture in the EFL classroom. It analyzes some of the common problems observed in the teaching of English to senior secondary schools students, particularly in the context of the school leaving examination. It offers a discussion of the role of English language education in the school curriculum and stresses the importance of using texts with cognitive appeal at lessons. It presents the impact of literature, films and songs on the student's overall development and a set of criteria for text selection. It also investigates the English teacher's role in exploiting the educational potential of culture texts and proposes a way of integrating them with a system of preparation for the school leaving examination in English.

The Routledge Handbook of Educational Linguistics provides a comprehensive survey of the core and current language-related issues in educational contexts. Bringing together the expertise and voices of well-established as well as emerging scholars from around the world, the handbook offers over thirty authoritative and critical explorations of methodologies and contexts of educational linguistics, issues of instruction and assessment, and teacher education, as well as coverage of key topics such as advocacy, critical pedagogy, and ethics and politics of research in educational linguistics. Each chapter relates to key issues raised in the respective topic, providing additional historical background, critical discussion, reviews of pertinent research methods, and an assessment of what the future might hold. This volume embraces multiple, dynamic perspectives and a range of voices in order to move forward in new and productive directions, making The Routledge Handbook of Educational Linguistics an essential volume for any student and researcher interested in the issues surrounding language and education, particularly in multilingual and multicultural settings.

Explicit Learning in the L2 Classroom offers a unique five-prong (theoretical, empirical, methodological, pedagogical, and model building) approach to the issue of explicit learning in the L2 classroom from a student-centered perspective. To achieve this five-prong objective, the book reports the theoretical underpinnings, empirical studies, and the research designs employed in current research to investigate the constructs of attention and awareness in SLA with the objectives to (1) propose a model of the L2 learning process in SLA that accounts for the cognitive processes employed during this process and (2) provide pedagogical and curricular implications for the L2 classroom. The book also provides a comprehensive treatise of research methodology that is aimed at not only underscoring the major features of conducting robust research designs with high levels of internal validity but also preparing teachers to become critical readers of published empirical research.

Der Band enthalt 34 Beitrage, die beim 45. Linguistischen Kolloquium in Veszprem (Ungarn) vom 16. bis 18. September 2010 prasentiert wurden. Die Autoren beschaftigen sich mit alteren und neueren Arbeitsfeldern der Sprachwissenschaft sowie ihren innovativen Ergebnissen. Die internationale Zusammensetzung der Kolloquiumsteilnehmer und ihre diversen methodischen Standpunkte und Aspekte bieten ein breit gefachertes Forschungsfeld im linguistischen Wissenschaftsbetrieb. Neben Angewandter Linguistik, Interkultureller Linguistik, Pragmatik, Lexikologie, Semantik, Kontaktlinguistik und Grammatikographie ist auch die Sektion Fremdsprachendidaktik vertreten. Daruber hinaus werden in dem Sammelband Fragen fur kunftige Forschungen formuliert. This volume presents 34 papers delivered at the 45th Linguistics Colloquium in Veszprem (Hungary) from 16th to 18th September, 2010. The authors deal with older and newer fields of work in linguistics as well as their innovative results. The international composition of the participants and the various methodological positions and aspects of the academic activities in linguistics offer the possibility of a broad field of research. Apart from Applied Linguistics, Intercultural Linguistics, Pragmatics, Lexicology, Semantics, Contact Linguistics and Grammaticography, the book also presents Foreign Language Didactics. Moreover, the book suggests topics for future research.

Learning a foreign language in its cultural context has a significant effect on the subjective mind, ranging from the unsettling to the inspirational. The complex interplay between native and foreign languages, their cultural conceptualisations and discourses and the mind and body of the learner results in the subjective construction of individual positionings located "in between" the languages and cultures involved. These processes are not restricted to the cognitive level of learning but also involve deep-seated habits, values and beliefs. These habits, values and beliefs are to a certain extent the result of subjective experiences and feelings; however, they are also embedded in a socio-cultural network of concepts, norms, traditions and life-worlds, so that they are characterised both by the learner's subjectivity and by the sociality and (inter-)culturality of their environment. The essays in this volume explore the subjective dimension of intercultural language learning, ranging from theoretical considerations to empirical studies and providing stimulating insights into this important area of study.

Researching Pedagogic Tasks brings together a series of empirical studies into the use of pedagogical tasks for second language learning, with a view to better understanding the structure of tasks, their impact on students, and their use by teachers. The volume starts with an introduction to the background and key issues in the topic area and is then organised into three sections: the first section focuses on the language and learning of students on tasks the second on the use of tasks in the language classroom the third on the use of tasks for language testing Each section begins with a succinct section introduction, and the volume concludes with an afterword relating the theme of the volume to issues in curriculum development. The chapters include both experimental and qualitative approaches to the topic, some providing original accounts of specific studies, others offering overviews of linked series of studies.

This volume brings together thirteen articles presented at the 27th International Conference of the Croatian Applied Linguistics Society held in Dubrovnik in 2013. The authors explore four groups of issues: stability and change at the intersection of the standard and other varieties; language policy and language attitudes in relation to the status of L1 and L2; bilingualism and multilingualism; translation solutions reaffirming and/or establishing the norm. The articles focus on the contemporary Croatian and Slovenian sociolinguistic situation, relating it to the current situation in Europe.

In this book, Farr examines the spoken and written language of post-observation teaching-practice feedback on teacher education programs. To do so, she draws upon theories from discourse analysis, conversation analysis, and pragmatics to frame the analysis of feedback meetings and written tutor reports, which are then examined using comparative quantitative and qualitative corpus-based techniques. The overall aim is to determine the defining characteristics of this genre, focusing especially on pragmatic factors, with the ultimate goal of investigating the salient aspects responsible for making feedback both effective and affective. Farr's research draws upon a spoken corpus of feedback interactions and a written corpus of tutor reports from language teacher education and is also strongly informed by data in the form of diary reflections and questionnaire responses from student teachers and questionnaire responses from the relevant tutors.

This book delineates a range of linguistic features that characterise the reading texts used at the B2 (Independent User) and C1 (Proficient User) levels of the Greek State Certificate of English Language Proficiency exams in order to help define text difficulty per level of competence. In addition, it examines whether specific reader variables influence test takers' perceptions of reading comprehension difficulty. The end product is a Text Classification Profile per level of competence and a formula for automatically estimating text difficulty and assigning levels to texts consistently and reliably in accordance with the purposes of the exam and its candidature-specific characteristics.

The author addresses key questions of foreign language teaching: How does foreign language learning take place? What is the mechanism of foreign language use and learning? What are the sources of our understanding of these processes? What significance does our understanding have for foreign language teaching? The main argument is that, in order to deal with the complexity of language learning and meet the current demands for foreign language competency, we must employ the framework of an empirical, relatively autonomous discipline of Foreign Language Didactics, constituted as a "normal" science which strives to understand foreign language learning as its subject-matter. This constructivist psycholinguistic conception targets language learning processes in the real world, i.e. as language use in the context of verbal communication, i.e. comprehension and production in speech and writing. The processes are represented as taking place in the learner's cognitive system for information processing in communicative interaction, a universal human phenomenon. This perspective leads to systematic options and strategies for the practical teaching of foreign languages with focus on English as a world language.

Leading teacher of Arabic, Munther Younes, explores the realities of teaching Arabic as a foreign language (AFL) and outlines his groundbreaking approach to instruction, tried and tested over many years at Cornell University.

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The Integrated Approach to Arabic Instruction "introduces teachers to the features of an integrated Arabic program one that simultaneously teaches the two varieties of the language, Modern Standard Written Arabic, "fu "and the dialect, " mmiyya "in a way that reflects the authentic practice of native Arabic speakers. This pedagogy, Younes argues, is the most logical, effective and economical method of instruction as it prepares students fully for the realities of the Arabic diglossic situation.

Younes takes teachers through the following ground:

• Consideration of the current Arabic sociolinguistic situation and key debates in the field
• Outline of changing student goals and the needs of the modern AFL learner
• Overview of the Integrated Approach covering its rationale, features, implementation methods and usage of instructional materials in the classroom
• Response to objections to the Integrated Approach, outlining its advantages over alternative practices and clarifying crucial issues in practice

"

The Integrated Approach to Arabic Instruction "addresses a pressing issue deeply relevant to the world of Arabic Language Instruction, placed in the practical context of shifting attitudes among students and educators. It will be an essential resource for all teachers of Arabic as a Foreign Language. "

This book showcases how language learner agency can be understood and researched from varying perspectives by providing, for the first time, a collection of diverse approaches in one volume. The volume is organised into three main sections:the first sections offers an introduction to varying theoretical approaches to agency; the second section presents analyses of agency in a variety of empirical studies; and the third section focuses on the pedagogical implications of data-based studies of agency. The volume includes the work of researchers working in languages including English (ESL and EFL), Greek, Spanish, Swedish, Italian, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati and Truku (an indigenous language in Taiwan) and with both child and adult language learners. This collection will serve as a key reference for researchers of language learning and teaching, sociolinguistics and language and identity.

Winner of the AAAL First Book Award 2017! This book outlines a framework for teaching second language pragmatics grounded in Vygotskian sociocultural psychology. The framework focuses on the appropriation of sociopragmatic concepts as psychological tools that mediate pragmalinguistic choices. Using multiple sources of metalinguistic and performance data collected during a six-week pedagogical enrichment program involving one-on-one tutoring sessions, the volume explores both theoretical and practical issues relevant to teaching second language pragmatics from a Vygotskian perspective. The book represents an important contribution to second language instructional pragmatics research as well as to second language sociocultural psychology scholarship. It will be of interest to all those researching in this field and to language teachers who will find the pedagogical recommendations useful.

Talking About Language Assessment is the first book to take an interview-based approach to the history of language assessment. This collection consists of interviews originally featured in Language Assessment Quarterly with renowned language assessment experts. Contextualized with commentary by the editor, the articles in this text cover many of the essential areas of language testing and assessment including assessment design, validation argument, epistemological issues in research, and language assessment policy. This text is a valuable compilation on the history of language assessment, and an ideal resource for researchers and students in the field of language testing and assessment.

The Diagnosis of Reading in a Second or Foreign Language explores the notion of diagnostic testing and establishes a framework for its practical applications in understanding second and foreign language reading. The book uses case studies from a wide variety of subject areas to contextualize a theory of diagnosis and to show how second and foreign language reading has been assessed in the past, culminating in a discussion of how diagnosis might be used to better understand and assess second and foreign language reading abilities. This is the only book to provide a detailed look into the little-examined field of diagnostic language testing, ideal for students, researchers, and professionals in applied linguistics, second language acquisition, and language testing and education.

About the NPLA Series:

Headed by two of its leading scholars, the series captures the burgeoning field of language assessment by offering comprehensive and state-of-the-art coverage of its contemporary questions, pressing issues, and technical advances. It is the only active series of its kind on the market, and will include volumes on basic and advanced topics in language assessment, public policy and language assessment, and the interfaces of language assessment with other disciplines in applied linguistics. Each text presents key theoretical approaches and research findings, along with concrete practical implications and suggestions for readers conducting their own research or developmental studies.

The 21st-century global linguistic landscape has seen many changes for language learners. New assessments have been made in a host of areas, especially regarding learners' needs, motives, the target of instruction, and methodologies. The new realities, locales and purposes of communication all necessitate a shift in attitude and a new set of competencies is required of the teacher. This volume comprises a multi-faceted and thoughtful response to these changes in both modern reality and teaching philosophy. It is a study of a few of the other ways to tackle situations outside of norms and routines. The authors of this volume possess many years of teaching experience, and have stepped off the roads most travelled to explore new avenues and find novel solutions in foreign language teaching. This volume familiarises readers with contemporary theoretical debate and new research, and demonstrates how to easily translate these into practical, everyday classroom applications.

Explicating clearly and concisely the full implication of a praxis-oriented language pedagogy, this book argues for an approach to language teaching grounded in a significant scientific theory of human learning-a stance that rejects the consumer approach to theory and the dichotomy between theory and practice that dominates SLA and language teaching. This approach is based on Vygotsky's sociocultural theory, according to which the two activities are inherently connected so that each is necessarily rooted in the other; practice is the research laboratory where the theory is tested. From the perspective of language education, this is what is meant by the 'pedagogical imperative.' Sociocultural Theory and the Pedagogical Imperative in L2 Education* Elaborates a new approach to dealing with the relationship between theory and practice-an approach grounded in praxis-the dialectical unity of theory and practice * Presents an analysis of empirical research illustrating praxis-based principles in real language classrooms * Brings together cognitive linguistics and sociocultural theory the former provides the theoretical knowledge of language required of praxis and the latter furnishes the theoretical principles of learning and development also called for in a praxis approach * Offers recommendations for redesigning teacher education programs Its timely focus on the theory-practice gap in language education and its original approach to bridging it put this book at the cutting edge of thinking about Vygotskian sociocultural theory in applied linguistics and SLA.

For many decades, English language educators across the world have been locked in a paradigm of ESL/EFL/ESD methods that have circumvented the growth of any pedagogical will for Immersion in English (IE) or the Sustained Use of English (SUE) in speech environments where other languages challenge English-in-use and the preparation of teachers of English to facilitate IE or SUE in classroom praxis. There is an opportunity to advance this scholarship from an international perspective to build a distinct post-method pedagogy for English language teaching in the Caribbean and other global teaching-learning contexts. English Language Teaching in a Post-Method Paradigm is a critical scholarly publication that provides relevant teacher initiated theoretical frameworks and the latest empirical research findings in English language teaching that promote English as the tool for global integration and communication. Highlighting topics such as curriculum, pedagogy, and teacher education, this book is ideal for professionals, researchers, policymakers, academicians, and educators.

Leading teacher of Arabic, Munther Younes, explores the realities of teaching Arabic as a foreign language (AFL) and outlines his groundbreaking approach to instruction, tried and tested over many years at Cornell University.

"

The Integrated Approach to Arabic Instruction "introduces teachers to the features of an integrated Arabic program one that simultaneously teaches the two varieties of the language, Modern Standard Written Arabic, "fu "and the dialect, " mmiyya "in a way that reflects the authentic practice of native Arabic speakers. This pedagogy, Younes argues, is the most logical, effective and economical method of instruction as it prepares students fully for the realities of the Arabic diglossic situation.

Younes takes teachers through the following ground:

• Consideration of the current Arabic sociolinguistic situation and key debates in the field
• Outline of changing student goals and the needs of the modern AFL learner
• Overview of the Integrated Approach covering its rationale, features, implementation methods and usage of instructional materials in the classroom
• Response to objections to the Integrated Approach, outlining its advantages over alternative practices and clarifying crucial issues in practice

"

The Integrated Approach to Arabic Instruction "addresses a pressing issue deeply relevant to the world of Arabic Language Instruction, placed in the practical context of shifting attitudes among students and educators. It will be an essential resource for all teachers of Arabic as a Foreign Language. "