This volume, grounded on usage-based models of language, is an edited collection of empirical research examining how cognitive linguistics can advance Japanese pedagogy. Each chapter presents an acquisition or classroom study which focuses on challenging features and leads instructors and researchers into new realms of analysis by showing innovative views and practices resulting in better understanding and improved L2 learning of Japanese.

Translation can help improve foreign language teaching and learning - this study shows how. In an increasingly globalised world and in an increasingly multilingual Europe, translation plays an important role. Significant signs of a new revival of translation in language teaching have become visible, as shown by recent literature on applied linguistics. This book contributes to this movement, embracing both a theoretical and an empirical purpose by integrating viewpoints from Applied Linguistics, Translation Studies and Second Language Acquisition. In an attempt to show how the use of translation in foreign language classes can help enhance and further improve reading, writing, speaking and listening skills, this work calls for a re-evaluation and a rehabilitation of the translation activities in the foreign language classes.

Offering a historical and empirical account, this book provides a comprehensive overview of the socio-educational model of second language acquisition. This approach to understanding motivational variables that promote success in the learning of a second or foreign language - distinguishing between language classroom motivation and language learning motivation - is a major one in the history of this field of research. Chapters include a discussion of the definition and measurement of motivation; historical foundations of the model; recent studies with the International Attitude Motivation Test Battery for English as a foreign language in different countries; the implications of the model to the classroom context; and a discussion of criticisms and misconceptions of the model. The book provides graduate students and researchers with unique coverage of this research-oriented approach as well as serving as a source book for the area. It is ideal for courses on motivation in second language learning, or as a supplemental text for research-oriented courses in applied linguistics, educational psychology, or language research in general.

This book critically analyses early school foreign language teaching policy and practice, foregrounding the influence of the socioeducational and cultural context on how policies are implemented and assessing the factors which either promote or constrain their effectiveness. It focuses on four Asian contexts - Malaysia, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Thailand - while providing a discussion of policy and practice in Canada and Finland as a comparison. Concentrating on the state school sector, it criticises the worldwide trend for a focus on English as the principal or only foreign language taught in primary schools, founded on a rationale that widespread proficiency in English is important for future national success in a globalised economy. It maintains that the economic rationale is not only largely unfounded and irrelevant to the language learning experiences of young children but also that the focus on English exacerbates system inequalities rather than contributing to their reduction. The book argues for a broader perspective on language learning in primary schools, one that values multilingualism and knowledge of regional and indigenous languages alongside a more diverse range of foreign languages. This book will appeal to educational policymakers, researchers and students interested in early foreign language learning in state educational systems worldwide.

L2 Spanish Pragmatics is a comprehensive, state-of-the-art overview of current research into pragmatics and Spanish language teaching. It presents the research on the teaching of pragmatics and Spanish language as a multifaceted discipline. Written by an international cohort of scholars, the breadth of topics includes innovative topics in the teaching of Spanish, such as genre analysis, discourse markers, politeness and impoliteness, nonverbal communication, irony, and humor, as well as web-based pragmatics resources. Key features: An overview of new trends in Spanish pragmatics research and the growing need for instruction in intercultural communication; Insights derived from important theoretical and empirical works that may contribute to integrate pragmatics in the teaching of the language; Explanations with great clarity, plenty of examples and references, as well as connections to language teaching and learning; Tasks and activities that can help teachers move from a traditional curricular approach to a more innovative and engaging one; Descriptions of numerous activities or guidelines for the classroom, supplemented with additional materials; A bilingual glossary of terms in pragmatics that will help teachers in their implementation of activities to teach L2 Spanish pragmatics. L2 Spanish Pragmatics constitutes a reference book on current research on learning and teaching Spanish pragmatics. It will be of interest to university lecturers, researchers, and graduate students. It will also be an excellent resource for language educators and K-16 teachers willing to expand their knowledge and apply the teaching of pragmatics as an integral component in the teaching of the Spanish language.

The majority of people around the world live in multilingual societies, and so it follows that plurilingualism should be considered normal. This book proposes a flexible and adaptive framework for designing and implementing language learning environments and tasks, which will be useful for practitioners working in classrooms where many languages are already spoken. The authors begin by presenting a state-of-the-art review of current research on language learning, language teaching and multilingual language acquisition. This is followed by a qualitative review of 37 multilingual research projects, which are treated as case studies to inform the practical guidance that constitutes the remainder of the book. The information and practical framework contained within this book will be of interest to researchers, teachers and teacher educators.

An Introduction to Foreign Language Learning and Teaching provides an engaging, student-friendly guide to the field of foreign language learning and teaching. Aimed at students with no background in the area and taking a task-based approach, this book: introduces the theoretical and practical aspects of both learning and teaching; provides discussion and workshop activities throughout each chapter of the book, along with further reading and reflection tasks; deals with classroom- and task-based teaching, and covers lesson planning and testing, making the book suitable for use on practical training courses; analyses different learning styles and suggests strategies to improve language acquisition; includes examples from foreign language learning in Russian, French, and German, as well as English; is accompanied by a brand new companion website at www.routledge.com/cw/johnson, which contains additional material, exercises, and weblinks. Written by an experienced teacher and author, An Introduction to Foreign Language Learning and Teaching is essential reading for students beginning their study in the area, as well as teachers in training and those already working in the field.

In a world where migration is a daily reality, the ways in which affirming educational experiences can be provided for all children remain high on the agendas of schools, colleges and teachers. This book provides practical ideas for how children, young people and parents can feel welcomed and affirmed in their multilingual identities and all learners can feel intrigued and excited by the linguistic diversity of the world's people. The book will be an invaluable resource for educational practitioners, researchers, trainee teachers, teacher educators and all who are passionate about bringing together creative arts approaches with language learning and teaching. By blending academic theory with tried-and-tested classroom practice the authors will inspire readers to adapt the featured activities for their own contexts and learners.

Drawing on the collective expertise of language scholars and educators in a variety of subdisciplines, the Handbook for Arabic Language Teaching Professionals in the 21st Century, Volume II, provides a comprehensive treatment of teaching and research in Arabic as a second and foreign language worldwide. Keeping a balance among theory, research and practice, the content is organized around 12 themes: Trends and Recent Issues in Teaching and Learning Arabic Social, Political and Educational Contexts of Arabic Language Teaching and Learning Identifying Core Issues in Practice Language Variation, Communicative Competence and Using Frames in Arabic Language Teaching and Learning Arabic Programs: Goals, Design and Curriculum Teaching and Learning Approaches: Content-Based Instruction and Curriculum Arabic Teaching and Learning: Classroom Language Materials and Language Corpora Assessment, Testing and Evaluation Methodology of Teaching Arabic: Skills and Components Teacher Education and Professional Development Technology-Mediated Teaching and Learning Future Directions The field faces new challenges since the publication of Volume I, including increasing and diverse demands, motives and needs for learning Arabic across various contexts of use; a need for accountability and academic research given the growing recognition of the complexity and diverse contexts of teaching Arabic; and an increasing shortage of and need for quality of instruction. Volume II addresses these challenges. It is designed to generate a dialogue-continued from Volume I-among professionals in the field leading to improved practice, and to facilitate interactions, not only among individuals but also among educational institutions within a single country and across different countries.

Innovative activities for Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) teachers and trainee teachers. CLIL Activities is organised into five chapters: Activating, Guiding understanding, Focus on language, Focus on speaking and Focus on writing. A further chapter provides practical ideas for assessment, review and feedback. The Background to CLIL section offers a clear explanation of what CLIL is and its benefits and challenges. The book contains a wide range of easily accessible activities that can be used in any order. Dedicated subject pages include annotated extracts from authentic school teaching materials, demonstrating how language is used in particular school subjects, such as geography, science, maths and ICT. The accompanying CD-ROM contains print-ready CLIL activities.

Orelus' valuable study draws on the scholarly work of sociocultural and postcolonial theorists, as well as testimonies collected from study participants, to explore accentism, the systemic form of discrimination against speakers whose accents deviate from a socially constructed norm. Orelus examines the manner in which accents are acquired and the effects of such acquisition on the learning and educational experiences of linguistically and culturally diverse students. He goes on to demonstrate the ways and the degree to which factors such as race, class, and country of origin are connected with nonstandard accent-based discrimination. Finally, this book proposes alternative ways to challenge and counter the accentism that minority groups, including linguistically and culturally diverse groups, have faced in schools and in society at large. It will be of interest to all of those concerned with linguistic/accent-based prejudice and the experience of those who face it.

Now in its second edition, Teaching and Researching Language Learning Strategies: Self-Regulation in Context charts the field systematically and coherently for the benefit of language learning practitioners, students, and researchers. This volume carries on the author's tradition of linking theoretical insights with readability and practical utility and offers an enhanced Strategic Self-Regulation Model. It is enriched by many new features, such as the first-ever major content analysis of published learning strategy definitions, leading to a long-awaited, encompassing strategy definition that, to a significant degree, brings order out of chaos in the strategy field. Rebecca L. Oxford provides an intensive discussion of self-regulation, agency, and related factors as the "soul of learning strategies." She ushers the strategy field into the twenty-first century with the first in-depth treatment of strategies and complexity theory. A major section is devoted to applications of learning strategies in all language skill areas and in grammar and vocabulary. The last chapter presents innovations for strategy instruction, such as ways to deepen and differentiate strategy instruction to meet individual needs; a useful, scenario-based emotion regulation questionnaire; insights on new research methods; and results of two strategy instruction meta-analyses. This revised edition includes in-depth questions, tasks, and projects for readers in every chapter. This is the ideal textbook for upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in TESOL, ELT, education, linguistics, and psychology.

The topics of autonomy and independence play an increasingly important role in language education. They raise issues such as learners' responsibility for their own learning, and their right to determine the direction of their own learning, the skills which can be learned and applied in self-directed learning and capacity for independent learning and the extents to which this can be suppressed by institutional education. This volume offers new insights into the principles of autonomy and independence and the practices associated with them focusing on the area of EFL teaching. The editors' introduction provides the context and outlines the main issues involved in autonomy and independence. Later chapters discuss the social and political implications of autonomy and independence and their effects on educational structures. The consequences for the design of learner-centred materials and methods is discussed, together with an exploration of the practical ways of implementing autonomy and independence in language teaching and learning . Each section of the book opens with an introduction to give structure to the development of ideas and themes, with synopses to highlight salient features in the text and help build upon the material of previous chapters.

The increased use of sophisticated mobile devices opens up new possibilities and challenges for language teachers and learners, which has led to an increasing need to consider issues relating to mobile technologies specifically. To date, there is no comprehensive book-length treatment of issues relating to mobile-assisted language learning (MALL). This book fills that gap, providing a resource for present and future language teachers, and for graduate students of applied linguistics and TESOL, to understand how mobile devices can best be used for language teaching. It is founded on existing research, practice and theory, and offers a balanced perspective, based on the author's own experiences with mobile learning - considering the limitations of such an approach, as well as the benefits. Written in a practical and approachable tone, it provides a much-needed guide to MALL, and its fascinating insights promote further debate within the field.

In this classic edition of their ground-breaking work, Usha Goswami and Peter Bryant revisit their influential theory about how phonological skills support the development of literacy. The book describes three causal factors which can account for children's reading and spelling development: pre-school phonological knowledge of rhyme and alliteration the impact of alphabetic instruction on knowledge about phonemes links between early spelling and later reading. This classic edition includes a new introduction from the authors which evaluates research from the past 25 years. Examining new evidence from auditory neuroscience, statistical modelling and orthographic database analyses, as well as new data from cognitive developmental psychology and educational studies, the authors consider how well their original ideas have stood up to the test of time. Phonological Skills and Learning to Read will continue to be essential reading for students and researchers in language and literacy development, and those involved in teaching children to read.

This innovative book focuses on the relationships among self-regulated language learning strategies, students' individual characteristics, and the diverse contexts in which learning occurs. It presents state-of-the-art, lively, readable chapters by well-known experts and new, promising scholars, who analyze learning strategy theory, research, assessment, and use. Written by a team of international contributors from Austria, Canada, Greece, Japan, New Zealand, Poland, Turkey, the UK and the USA, this volume provides theoretical insights on how strategic learning interacts with complex environments. It explores strategy choice and the fluidity and flexibility of learning strategies. Research-based but practical themes in the book include strategy-related teacher preparation; differentiated strategy instruction to meet the needs of diverse learners of different ages, cultures, and learning styles; and creative, visualization-based development of strategy awareness. Examining methodologies for strategy research and assessment, the volume explores narrative, decision-tree, scenario-based, and questionnaire-based research, as well as mixed-methods research and new assessment tools for young learners' strategies. It presents research on strategies used for foreign/second language pronunciation, pragmatics, listening, reading, speaking, writing, and test-taking. By providing a wide range of examples of strategies in research and action in a number of countries, cultures, and educational settings, and by offering incisive section overviews and a detailed synthesis at the end, this book enables readers to develop a holistic understanding of language learning strategies. With additional online strategy materials available for downloading, Language Learning Strategies and Individual Learner Characteristics is invaluable to all those interested in helping language students learn more effectively.

The Routledge Handbook of Language and Creativity provides an introduction to and survey of a wide range of perspectives on the relationship between language and creativity. Defining this complex and multifaceted field, this book introduces a conceptual framework through which the various definitions of language and creativity can be explored. Divided into four parts, it covers: different aspects of language and creativity, including dialogue, metaphor and humour literary creativity, including narrative and poetry multimodal and multimedia creativity, in areas such as music, graffiti and the internet creativity in language teaching and learning. With over 30 chapters written by a group of leading academics from around the world, The Routledge Handbook of Language and Creativity will serve as an important reference for students and scholars in the fields of English language studies, applied linguistics, education, and communication studies.

The Routledge Advanced Language Training Course for K-16 Non-native Chinese Teachers is a content-based and thematically organized textbook designed for non-native in- and pre-service K-16 Chinese language teachers. Based on five years of field testing, the book offers an innovative approach to advanced language instruction, allowing users to further advance their language proficiency while continuing their professional development in teaching Chinese as a second or foreign language. The textbook: covers a range of up-to-date pedagogical and cultural themes provides a variety of engaging activities and exercises, allowing readers for K-16 to explore pedagogical and cultural issues in the target language with best classroom practices in mind familiarises users with authentic forms of modern communication in today's China to better engage learners is accompanied by a Companion Website with audio recordings for each lesson as well as supplementary materials and teaching resources. The Routledge Advanced Language Training Course for K-16 Non-native Chinese Teachers is an essential resource for non-native Chinese teachers and for those on TCFL teacher training programs.

Taking a Vygotskian sociocultural stance, this book demonstrates the meaningful role that L2 teacher educators and L2 teacher education play in the professional development of L2 teachers through systematic, intentional, goal-directed, theorized L2 teacher education pedagogy. The message is resoundingly clear: Teacher education matters! It empirically documents the ways in which engagement in the practices of L2 teacher education shape how teachers come to think about and enact their teaching within the sociocultural contexts of their learning-to-teach experiences. Providing an insider's look at L2 teacher education pedagogy, it offers a close up look at teacher educators who are skilled at moving L2 teachers toward more theoretically and pedagogically sound instructional practices and greater levels of professional expertise. First, the theoretical foundation and educational rationale for exploring what happens inside the practices of L2 teacher education are established. These theoretical concepts are then used to conduct microgenetic analyses of the moment-to-moment, asynchronous, and at-a-distance dialogic interactions that take place in five distinct but sometimes overlapping practices that the authors have designed, repeatedly implemented, and subsequently collected data on in their own L2 teacher education programs. Responsive mediation is positioned as the nexus of mindful L2 teacher education and proposed as a psychological tool for teacher educators to both examine and inform the ways in which they design, enact, and assess the consequences of their own L2 teacher education pedagogy.

At the heart of the Cajun culture is a fascinating dialect that has survived the forces of Americanization and is still spoken by over 250,000 residents of Louisiana. With a historical overview and an introduction to the language, this book answers to many common questions about Cajun French. The preface by David Cheramie, executive director of the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL), offers the viewpoint of an influential leader in the movement to preserve Louisiana's unique linguistic heritage. --Pronunciation guide --Basic grammar --Frequently asked questions about Cajun French --3,800 dictionary entries --Essential phrases

This is the first book on language learner autonomy to combine comprehensive accounts of classroom practice with empirical and case-study research and a wide-ranging engagement with applied linguistic and pedagogical theory. It provides a detailed description of an autonomy classroom in action, focusing on Danish mixed-ability learners of English at lower secondary level, and reports the findings of a longitudinal research project that explored the learning achievement over four years of one class in the same Danish school. It also presents two learner case studies to show that the autonomy classroom responds to the challenges of differentiation and inclusion, and two institutional case studies that illustrate the power of autonomous learning to support the social inclusion of adult refugees and the educational inclusion of immigrant children. The concluding chapter offers some reflections on teacher education for language learner autonomy. Each chapter ends with discussion points and suggestions for further reading.

The issue of high-level language proficiency in other than monolingual contexts can be approached from a variety of perspectives, including linguistic/structural; psycholinguistic/cognitive and sociolinguistic/societal. Bringing together a team of experts, this volume takes a novel empirical approach to the subject combined with an up-to-date understanding of these research areas, to answer two important research questions in the field of second language acquisition: what conditions allow learners to attain an outstanding level of proficiency in a second language, and what factors still prevent them from becoming entirely like first language speakers. Looking at a range of European languages including English, French, Italian, Spanish and Swedish, it provides important insights into second language use at the highest levels as well as in high-proficient mixed language use in multicultural settings. A useful tool for both language teaching and language teacher training, it provides a solid grounding for further study in this important area of research.

Revised and updated throughout, this 10th-anniversary edition of Can Creative Writing Really Be Taught? is a significantly expanded guide to key issues and practices in creative writing teaching today. Challenging the myths of creative writing teaching, experienced and up-and-coming teachers explore what works in the classroom and workshop and what does not. Now brought up-to-date with new issues that have emerged with the explosion of creative writing courses in higher education, the new edition includes: * Guides to and case studies of workshop practice * Discussions on grading and the myth of "the easy A" * Explorations of the relationship between reading and writing * A new chapter on creative writing research * A new chapter on games, fan-fiction and genre writing * New chapters on identity and activism

Based on the assumptions that students expect feedback and want to improve, and that improvement is possible, this book introduces a framework that applies the theory of self-regulated learning to guide second language writing teachers response to learners at all stages of the writing process. This approach provides teachers with principles and activities for helping students to take more responsibility for their own learning. By using self-regulated learning strategies, students can increase their independence from the teacher, improve their writing skills, and continue to make progress once the course ends, with or without teacher guidance.

The book focuses on the six dimensions of self-regulated learning motive, methods of learning, time, physical environment, social environment, and performance. Each chapter offers practical activities and suggestions for implementing the principles and guidelines, including tools and materials that teachers can immediately use.

Do you want to talk about the linguistic research that you think is important but you don't know where to start? Language is a topic that is relevant to everyone, and linguists are often asked to speak publicly about their research, to a range of lay audiences in radio, the media, politics, festivals and fairs, schools, museums and public libraries. However, relaying this vital information in an engaging way can often feel like an insurmountable task. This accessible guide offers practical advice on how to talk about language to a range of non-academic audiences. It draws on the linguistics behind effective communication to help you have cooperative conversations, and to organize your information for a diverse range of people. It is illustrated with a wealth of examples from real-life scenarios, and includes chapter-by-chapter worksheets, enabling you to make your own fun and interesting language science activities to share with others.