This volume offers a timely snapshot of current theory and research in the field of psychology in foreign language learning. It makes a powerful case for a more prominent role for psychology in language learning theory and emphasizes the importance of an understanding of psychological factors for enhancing pedagogical practice. Featuring contributions from leading researchers from around the world, the chapters are designed to be accessible to both specialists and non-specialists. Each chapter focuses on a different psychological construct and provides an overview of current thinking in the area drawing on insights from educational psychology, as well as an example of current research carried out by the authors. The wide range of theoretical perspectives and research approaches are unified by a common concern for the practical realities facing teachers and learners, making this book essential reading for anyone with an interest in the psychology of learning a foreign language.

This volume sheds light on Creativity and Innovation in Language Education as key issues for the development of personal, professional and social competences and aims at highlighting the relevance of such concepts which education at any level, in any sector and at any time should continuously stimulate and enhance. The prefaces and the interrelated sections explore the concept of creativity linked with issues such as cultures and language use, language teaching, business settings, technology. This is carried out following theoretical and practical perspectives which integrate with each other. The volume is published in a historical moment in Europe in which the European Commission is celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the Barcelona Agreement (2002-2012), which emphasized the importance of learning two languages in addition to the mother tongue. The volume reflects on strategies for achieving these objectives, while underlining the belief that creativity is a skill which needs to be identified, stimulated and nurtured for the benefit of the entire society.

This book provides one perspective on how Applied Linguistics has been defined and how the field of Applied Linguistics has developed over the last 30 years. The author addresses themes like why formal linguistic theories lost so much ground and how the interest in more socially oriented approaches grew? He also addresses the impact of Applied Linguistics on language teaching. Adopting a theme-based approach, the structure of this book is largely defined by the topics covered in interviews with 40 leading international figures selected by the author including Rod Ellis, Diane Larsen-Freeman, Susan Gass, Henry Widdowson, Suresh Canagarajah and Claire Kramsch. These data are supplemented by questionnaires from a further fifty applied linguists, also selected by the author. This will be of interest to anyone studying or researching Applied Linguistics and will also be relevant to those in the related area of English Language Teaching.

Afrocentric Teacher-Research: Rethinking Appropriateness and Inclusion reports on a qualitative teacher-research study that examines the ways in which African American and other students perform expository writing tasks using an Afrocentric Ebonics-focused first-year writing curriculum. Foundational to the book is a study of twenty-one student-writers and one writing classroom employing an Afrocentric Ebonics-based curriculum. Further, this book conceptualizes a theory of Afrocentric teacher-research that includes all students in addition to African Americans, and positions teacher-research as a methodology that not only transforms classroom practices, but also transforms disciplinary practices by urging rhetoric and composition teachers and scholars to revise the way that we study Afrocentric pedagogies and Ebonics-based linguistic practices.

This book investigates the impact of language learning and study abroad on the career options and choices of US-based alumni of all ages. It reports on the results of a mixed-methods study which used both an extensive nationwide survey and qualitative life history interviews with 54 participants systematically selected to represent a broad range of backgrounds and professions. International education experiences are shown to exert considerable influence on the aspirations and career paths of individuals in a wide variety of fields (e.g. education, healthcare, business, government service). The long-term benefits of language study are illustrated both in narratives from individuals whose work requires proficiency beyond English and from participant comments on improvement in their use of English for international communication. The book will be of relevance to a wide audience of international education professionals in addition to researchers and students in applied linguistics and language education.

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.

Communicating Identities is a book for language teachers who wish to focus on the topic of identity in the context of their classroom teaching. The work provides an accessible introduction to research and theory on language learner and language teacher identity. It provides a set of interactive, practical activities for use in language classrooms in which students explore and communicate about aspects of their identities. The communicative activities concern the various facets of the students' own identities and are practical resources that teachers can draw on to structure and guide their students' exploration of their identities. All the activities include a follow-on teacher reflection in which teachers explore aspects of their own identity in relation to the learner identities explored in the activities. The book also introduces teachers to practical steps in doing exploratory action research so that they can investigate identity systematically in their own classrooms.

This comprehensive guide to research and debate centres around language learning in childhood, the age factor and the different contexts where language learning happens, including home and school contexts. The scope is wide, capturing examples of studies with different age groups, different methodological approaches and different languages.

The field of second/foreign language teacher education is calling out for a coherent and comprehensive framework for teacher preparation in these times of accelerating economic, cultural, and educational globalization. Responding to this call, this book introduces a state-of-the-art model for developing prospective and practicing teachers into strategic thinkers, exploratory researchers, and transformative teachers. The model includes five modules: Knowing, Analyzing, Recognizing, Doing, and Seeing (KARDS). Its goal is to help teachers understand:

• how to build a viable professional, personal and procedural knowledge-base,
• how to analyze learner needs, motivation and autonomy,
• how to recognize their own identities, beliefs and values,
• how to do teaching, theorizing and dialogizing, and
• how to see their own teaching acts from learner, teacher, and observer perspectives.

Providing a scaffold for building a holistic understanding of what happens in the language classroom, this model eventually enables teachers to theorize what they practice and practice what they theorize. With its strong scholarly foundation and its supporting reflective tasks and exploratory projects, this book is immensely useful for students, practicing teachers, teacher educators, and educational researchers who are interested in exploring the complexity of language teacher education.

This volume on Ecology of Language presents chapters on ecologies of language , literacy and learning. The subject of language ecology is diversity within socio-political settings where the processes of language use create, reflect and challenge hierarchies and hegemonies. The volume covers the following topics: Historical and theoretical perspectives, language ecologies of selected countries and regions, focus on Asia, Australia, Africa, language ecologies of dispersed and diasporic communities, esp. Chinese, Malay, Moroccan, classroom language ecologies in multilingual contexts, language ecology of literacies, oracies and discourses. This is one of ten volumes of the Encyclopedia of Language and Education published by Springer. The Encyclopedia bears testimony to the dynamism and evolution of the language and education field, as it confronts the ever-burgeoning and irrepressible linguistic diversity and ongoing pressures and expectations placed on education around the world.

If we want to treat learners as practitioners of learning, alongside teachers as practitioners of teaching, and therefore capable of reaping the developmental benefits of practitioner research, how can we best proceed? For Allwright and Hanks the answer lies in Exploratory Practice - an inclusive form of practitioner research developed largely in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and in Lancaster, England, that enables both learners and teachers to develop their own understandings of their learning and teaching lives.
After arguing that developments in the field of applied linguistics have fallen short of establishing such a perspective on learners, and reviewing current research models, the authors propose seven principles for a truly inclusive extension of practitioner research - Exploratory Practice.
Five full chapters document, through learner and teacher narratives from around the world, how Exploratory Practice can engage learners as developing practitioners of learning, and enhance the learning process by enriching human relationships in the classroom.

Using a reader-friendly, structured approach, "Qualitative Research in Applied Linguistics: A Practical Introduction" presents an easy-to-follow and straightforward guide to qualitative inquiry. Written by leading authors in a clear, informal style, it is an essential companion for graduate students and practicing teachers embarking on their first qualitative research study in applied linguistics.
The ten central chapters introduce core qualitative research approaches and commonly used data collection methods. Each of these chapters offers:
- A comprehensive guide to help you understand and use each approach or method
- An illustrative example from applied linguistics research to help you see the approach or method 'in action'
- A succinct outline of how you can avoid common mistakes and improve the quality of your research
- Discussion questions and tasks to give you hands-on experience working with each research approach or data collection method
Additional chapters offer engaging introductions to the qualitative research cycle, ethics, and writing up your research. There is also a glossary of important key words.
This book has been carefully written to provide you with the essential research knowledge, skills - and confidence - you need to begin your qualitative research project.

Key Issues in the Teaching of Spanish Pronunciation: From Description to Pedagogy is a resource that encourages Spanish teachers and curriculum designers to increase their incorporation of pronunciation into the classroom. Combining theory and practical guidance, it will help language practitioners integrate the teaching of Spanish pronunciation with confidence and effectiveness. The international group of scholars across its 15 chapters is made up of individuals with well-established research records and training in best pedagogical practices. Key features: A range of topics including vowels, various classes of consonants, prosody, the use of technology, the role of orthography, the importance of both perception and production, individual learner differences, and teacher training; Overviews of descriptive, empirical, and acquisition-based research associated with each aspect of the Spanish sound system; Guidance on the difficulties that teachers face when incorporating the teaching of pronunciation into the classroom; Clear explanations of concepts, accompanied by an abundance of concrete examples and references; Multiple sample activities and lesson plans tailored to different levels and backgrounds of students; A bilingual glossary of terms to help the content reach the widest audience possible. Written in a clear and accessible manner, Key Issues in the Teaching of Spanish Pronunciation is an essential resource for teachers of Spanish at all levels. It is also an excellent reference book for researchers and both undergraduate and graduate university students interested in Spanish phonetics and language acquisition.

The Matter of Practice presents work by teacher-scholars from around the world who are rethinking the relationship between matter and meaning. By emphasizing spatial, bodily, and sensual dimensions of language and literacy practices, this volume offers a portrait of language pedagogy and research that challenges traditional barriers between subjects and objects, speech and noise, and languages and things. We envision the term 'new materialisms' as an invitation to locate theorizing, researching, and teaching practices within the rhythms and textures of our material, sensory, and perceptual lives. These chapters enact a hope that increased engagement with our physical surroundings and sensory experiences can extend the sphere of our social, creative, and intellectual labor and expand our understanding of what 'counts' as meaningful action.

Tasks in Second Language Learning aims to bring more fully into debate the holistic nature of language learning, which tasks are one way of achieving, and to outline the research implications of this perspective. It sets language learning tasks within a broad educational and social science perspective, with a consistent focus on the principles and practices of their use in the language classroom. Using case study data, illustrative materials, transcript data, and close analyses of published research studies, it provides ample and lively illustration of the contributions of a range of specialists in research, teaching methodology and materials development, and of the authors' own argument.

Non-native language teachers have often been viewed as an unavoidable fate of the profession, rather than an asset worth exploring and investigating. Now that non-natives are increasingly found teaching languages, and particularly English, both in ESL and EFL contexts, the identification of their specific contributions and their main strengths has become more relevant than ever.

As a result, there has recently been a surge of interest in the role of non-native teachers but little empirical research has been published so far. This volume is particularly rich in providing different approaches to the study of non-native teachers: NNS teachers as seen by students, teachers, graduate supervisors, and by themselves. It also contributes little explored perspectives, like classroom discourse analysis, or a social-psychological framework to discuss conceptions of NNS teachers.

This collection of original essays brings together contributors from both sides of the Atlantic to discuss the implications of the new media for the creation, delivery and assessment of English studies. Strategies by which digital technologies can serve professional, scholarly and pedagogical needs in a completely new way are explored in the context of the role and mission of humanities in the electronic age, student learning from a distance, teaching e-lit, electronic tutorials and interdisciplinarity and collaboration in a virtual environment. Including a useful Glossary of Terms and lists of Further Reading and Key Individuals in the field, this will be an essential volume for all teachers of English Studies.

This book features effective artistic practices to improve literacy and language skills for emergent bilinguals in PreK-12 schools. Including insights from key voices from the field, this book highlights how artistic practices can increase proficiency in emergent language learners and students with limited access to academic English. Challenging current prescriptions for teaching English to language learners, the arts-integrated framework in this book is grounded in a sense of student and teacher agency and offers key pedagogical tools to build upon students' sociocultural knowledge and improve language competence and confidence. Offering rich and diverse examples of using the arts as a way of talking, this volume invites teacher educators, teachers, artists, and researchers to reconsider how to fully engage students in their own learning and best use the resources within their own multilingual educational settings and communities.

The authors describe evaluation as a way of understanding and developing language programs: the thematic and background section sets out the decision-making, quality management, and learning functions of evaluation. Case studies illustrate the diversity of evaluation contexts, functions and approaches, documenting the ways in which evaluation processes and outcomes inform and facilitate program development, and contribute to explaining how language and teacher education programs constitute opportunities for learning. The ways in which evaluation practice can be researched and developed to maximize policy, institutional and program effectiveness is included, and a comprehensive set of resources for those commissioning, undertaking or researching language program evaluations concludes the text.

This is a resource for researchers and practitioners in a range of applied linguistics fields, including TESOL, language education and more generally, discourse analysis and stylistics. Pedagogically, this translates into recognition that students can be helped to develop a critical understanding of literary discourse as linguistic communication to the mutual enrichment of their literary, linguistic and cultural understandings. A conceptual map of the field, relevant researchable topics, research guidance and resources, and illustrative case studies drawn widely from real life teaching and research contexts are provided.

Community-based Language Learning offers a new framework for world language educators interested in integrating community-based language learning (CBLL) into their teaching and curricula. CBLL connects academic learning objectives with experiential learning, ranging from reciprocal partnerships with the community (e.g., community engagement, service learning) to one-directional learning situations such as community service and site visits. This resource prepares teachers to implement CBLL by offering solid theoretical frameworks alongside real-world case studies and engaging exercises, all designed to help students build both language skills and authentic relationships as they engage with world language communities in the US. Making the case that language learning can be a tool for social change as well, Community-based Language Learning serves as a valuable resource for language educators at all levels, as well as students of language teaching methodology and community organizations working with immigrant populations.

Understanding what constitutes expertise in language learning and teaching is important for theoretical reasons related to psycholinguistic, and applied linguistic, enquiry. It also has many significant applications in practice, particularly in relation to the training and practice of language teachers and improvements in students' strategies of learning. In this volume, methodologies for establishing what constitutes expert practice are discussed and the contributions address the fields of listening, reading, writing, speaking and communication strategies, looking at common characteristics of the 'expert teacher' and the 'expert learner'.

The term 'new learning environments' has, in the past, been employed almost exclusively in relation to discussions on the use of computers in language learning. This volume seeks to provide a broader interpretation for language learners, teachers and researchers who are increasingly involved in language learning beyond the traditional environment of the classroom. Contributors explore a range of theoretical and pedagogical frameworks which inform the development of new learning environments, the forms these environments take, and how they are created and sustained. This volume explores the issue of whether new learning environments call for new methodologies and support new kinds of learning, the extent to which they can be developded within schools and universities, and their potential role in language learning within the wider community.

A book that develops an understanding of practices at the very centre of language education - the classroom. It is written for postgraduate students in Applied Linguistics and Education, and practitioners, whether in TESOL or other language teaching, In Part 1 the author explores key concepts in unpacking the complexity of classroom life. In Part 2 existing research and practice are examined through a series of research case studies. Part 3 provides a template for research activity and suggestions for projects and methodologies, and Part 4 collects resources for readers keen to follow up the themes developed in the book .

This book is the first in its field. It showcases current and emerging communicative practices in the teaching and learning of ancient languages (Latin and Greek) across contemporary education in the US, the UK, South America and continental Europe. In all these parts of the globe, communicative approaches are increasingly being accepted as showing benefits for learners in school, university and college classrooms, as well as at specialist conferences which allow for total immersion in an ancient language. These approaches are characterised by interaction with others using the ancient language. They may include various means and modalities such as face-to-face conversations and written communication. The ultimate aim is to optimise the facility to read such languages with comprehension and engagement. The examples showcased in this volume provide readers with a vital survey of the most current issues in communicative language teaching, helping them to explore and consider adoption of a wider range of pedagogical practices, and encouraging them to develop tools to promote engagement and retention of a wider variety of students than currently find ancient languages accessible. Both new and experienced teachers and learners can build on the experiences and ideas in this volume to explore the value of these approaches in their own classrooms.