A remarkable case study based on a detailed comparison of non-human primates and human infants brings together key abilities that provide the foundation for language. This link makes the case for phylogenetic continuity across species and ontogenetic continuity from infancy to childhood. Examined here are the fundamental aspects of language acquisition, such as vocalizations, mapping of meaning on to sound, use of gestures to communicate and to symbolize, tool use, object concept and memory. This volume goes a step further to analyse the similarities and differences across species, and how these influence the evolution of language. The author provides evidence linking abilities associated with language acquisition and describes fascinating hypotheses about the origins of language.

Mimetic words, also known as 'sound-symbolic words', 'ideophones' or more popularly as 'onomatopoeia', constitute an important subset of the Japanese lexicon; we find them as well in the lexicons of other Asian languages and sub-Saharan African languages. Mimetics play a central role in Japanese grammar and feature in children's early utterances. However, this class of words is not considered as important in English and other European languages. This book aims to bridge the gap between the extensive research on Japanese mimetics and its availability to an international audience, and also to provide a better understanding of grammatical and structural aspects of sound-symbolic words from a Japanese perspective. Through the accounts of mimetics from the perspectives of morpho-syntax, semantics, language development and translation of mimetic words, linguists and students alike would find this book particularly valuable.

This book critically examines South Korean English teachers' awareness of and attitude towards eight varieties of English and how they respond to the proposal of a World Englishes approach in their teaching practice. It showcases the deeply rooted favouritism towards American English and illustrates how relevant challenges arising from this attitude can be addressed to meet the changing needs of future participants in international contexts. This book argues that disclosing and questioning the hidden discursive practices embedded in the English education policy in South Korea may be the first step in raising awareness of and in changing negative attitudes towards embracing diversified Englishes. The findings are systemically discussed in relation to the implications that researching awareness and attitude has for pedagogical considerations and for teacher training. This book aims to contribute to the field of WE, where studies relating to the South Korean context are largely limited.

This book offers an in-depth explanation of Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) and the methods necessary to implement it in the language classroom successfully. * Combines a survey of theory and research in instructed second language acquisition (ISLA) with insights from language teaching and the philosophy of education * Details best practice for TBLT programs, including discussion of learner needs and means analysis; syllabus design; materials writing; choice of methodological principles and pedagogic procedures; criterion-referenced, task-based performance assessment; and program evaluation * Written by an esteemed scholar of second language acquisition with over 30 years of research and classroom experience * Considers diffusion of innovation in education and the potential impact of TBLT on foreign and second language learning

The lexicon is now a major focus of research in computational linguistics and natural language processing (NLP), as more linguistic theories concentrate on the lexicon and as the acquisition of an adequate vocabulary has become the chief bottleneck in developing practical NLP systems. This collection describes techniques of lexical representation within a unification-based framework and their linguistic application, concentrating on the issue of structuring the lexicon using inheritance and defaults. Topics covered include typed feature structures, default unification, lexical rules, multiple inheritance and non-monotonic reasoning. The contributions describe both theoretical results and implemented languages and systems, including DATR, the Stuttgart TFS and ISSCO's ELU. This book arose out of a workshop on default inheritance in the lexicon organized as a part of the Esprit ACQUILEX project on computational lexicography. Besides the contributed papers mentioned above, it contains a detailed description of the ACQUILEX lexical knowledge base (LKB) system and its use in the representation of lexicons extracted semi-automatically from machine-readable dictionaries.

This volume emphasizes the emergence of linguistic development through children's and learners' interactions with their environment - spatial, social, cultural, educational - bringing to light commonalities between primary language development, child and adult second-language learning, and language acquisition by robots. The studies presented here challenge a number of dominant ideas in language acquisition theory. It is of interest to language acquisition researchers and professionals.

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.

Autonomy has become a keyword of language policy in education systems around the world, as the importance of independent learning and new technologies has grown.

Now in a fully revised and updated second edition, "Teaching and Researching Autonomy "provides an accessible and comprehensive critical account of the theory and practice of autonomy. Examining the history of the concept, it addresses important questions of how we can identify autonomy in language learning behaviours and how we can evaluate the wide variety of educational practices that have been designed to foster autonomy in learning.

Topics new to this edition include:

- Autonomy and new technologies

- Teacher autonomy

- The sociocultural implications of autonomy

With over three hundred new references and five new case studies of research on autonomy providing practical advice on research methods and topics in the field, "Teaching and Researching Autonomy" will be an essential introduction for teachers and students to a subject at the cutting edge of language teaching and research.

Innovations and Challenges in Applied Linguistics from the Global South provides an original appraisal of the latest innovations and challenges in applied linguistics from the perspective of the Global South. Global South perspectives are encapsulated in struggles for basic, economic, political and social transformation in an inequitable world, and are not confined to the geographical South. Taking a critical perspective on Southern theories, demonstrating why it is important to view the world from Southern perspectives and why such positions must be open to critical investigation, this book: charts the impacts of these theories on approaches to multilingualism, language learning, language in education, literacy and diversity, language rights and language policy; provides broad historical and geographical understandings of the movement towards a Southern perspective and draws on Indigenous and Southern ways of thinking that challenge mainstream viewpoints; seeks to develop alternative understandings of applied linguistics, expand the intellectual repertoires of the discipline, and challenge the complicities between applied linguistics, colonialism, and capitalism. Written by two renowned scholars in the field, Innovations and Challenges in Applied Linguistics from the Global South is key reading for advanced students and researchers of applied linguistics, multilingualism, language and education, language policy and planning, and language and identity.

For many years, the development of theories about the way children learn to read and write was dominated by studies of English-speaking populations. As we have learned more about the way that children learn to read and write other scripts - whether they have less regularity in their grapheme-phoneme correspondences or do not make use of alphabetic symbols at all - it has become clear that many of the difficulties that confront children learning to read and write English specifically are less evident, or even non-existent, in other populations. At the same time, some aspects of learning to read and write are very similar across scripts. The unique cross-linguistic perspective offered in this book, including chapters on Japanese, Greek and the Scandinavian languages as well as English, shows how the processes of learning to read and spell are affected by the characteristics of the writing system that children are learning to master.

"Researching Vocabulary" is written for language researchers who want to carry out valid and reliable studies on first and second language vocabulary. The author is a well-known vocabulary researcher and he outlines the dos and don'ts of good lexical research. Practical advice is given on a wide variety of research methodologies, ranging from paper-and-pencil tests of acquisition to the newest psycholinguistic techniques utilizing fMRI scanning. Some of the many topics include initial learning of the form-meaning link, attrition, the role of frequency and the L1 in vocabulary research, receptive and productive knowledge of vocabulary, formulaic language, word associations, vocabulary measurement, vocabulary learning strategies, and computer simulations of vocabulary acquisition. The book includes a Resources section which outlines the lexical tests, corpora, software, internet sites, and other resources available to vocabulary researchers. A list of past and present vocabulary researchers, annotated with their specialisms, is also provided.

The relationship between language and other aspects of conceptual development is one of the central issues in child language acquisition. One view holds that language is a special capacity, separate from other areas of cognition and learning. Another maintains that language is part of a larger, more general cognitive system, and is crucially dependent on other cognitive domains. Recent research has turned to blind children and their acquisition of language as a way of evaluating whether and how language development relies on the non-linguistic context. Vision and the Emergence of Meaning addresses this complex problem through a detailed empirical analysis of early language development in a group of blind, partially sighted and fully sighted children who took part in a pioneering longitudinal investigation at the University of Southern California. By exploring the strategies which blind children bring to selected aspects of the language learning task, Anne Dunlea not only identifies some important differences between blind and sighted children, but also offers new insights on semantic and pragmatic development in general. Further, the study demonstrates the role of conceptual information in language learning and, at a more fundamental level, reveals a convergence of early language and conceptual development.

This book deals with the question of how children exposed to two languages simultaneously from birth learn to speak those two languages. After a critical and comprehensive survey of most of the literature on the subject, the author concludes that empirically well-documented knowledge in this area is very scant indeed. The core of the book concerns a naturalistic study of a Dutch-English bilingual girl around the age of three. The study's main aim is to explore the nature of early bilingual morphosyntactic development. Detailed analyses of most aspects of this development show that a child who hears two separate languages spoken to her reflects this distinctness in the utterances she produces: each language is handled as a system in its own right. Furthermore, the young bilingual three-year-old greatly resembles her monolingual peers in either language. Both these findings, the author concludes, highlight the language-specific nature of the morphosyntactic development process. This book will interest linguists, psycholinguists, developmental psychologists, and child language specialists.

Ayhan Aksu-Koc's empirical research on Turkish children's acquisition of the past tense forms the basis for this original and important contribution to the current debate among psycholinguistics on the interrelationship between language and cognitive development. Turkish, in its grammar, makes a clear distinction between direct and indirect experiencing, separating personal observation of processes from both inference and narrative. This distinction thus provides an ideal means by which linguistic and nonlinguistic conceptual development can be observed. Dr Aksu-Koc has exploited this to full advantage in her broadly based longitudinal and cross-sectional study, conducted across a wide age range. The data are meticulously analyzed, and the theoretical implications for a neo-Piagetian paradigm are carefully considered.

This study examines the variation between children in early language development, focusing on their acquisition of the auxiliary verb. Learning auxiliary verbs and the syntactic and pragmatic functions with which they are associated is an essential component in the child's language development from an early stage. At the same time, children vary extensively in the age and stage at which auxiliaries emerge and also in the style and rate at which subsequent development takes place. Some aspects of this variation have been linked with the quality of interaction with the child's conversation partners, others with a tendency to acquire language holistically through unanalysed 'chunks'. Using data drawn both from the Bristol Longitudinal Study of Language Development and from independent case studies conducted in Wales, Dr Richards points to a number of important areas of variation between children, for example in sequence of syntactic development and in the relationship between pragmatic and syntactic factors, and raises a number of important methodological and theoretical issues, such as how to assess the level of unanalytical usage and how to measure real syntactic advance. By analysing relationships between input and auxiliary growth, the study attempts to resolve some of the inconsistencies in the results of previous studies which have included the auxiliary as a measure. The book will be of value to all those interested in language acquisition, whether linguists, psychologists, speech therapists or lecturers in nursery, infant and special education.

A considerable proportion of our everyday language is 'formulaic'. It is predictable in form, idiomatic, and seems to be stored in fixed, or semi-fixed, chunks. This book explores the nature and purposes of formulaic language, and looks for patterns across the research findings from the fields of discourse analysis, first language acquisition, language pathology and applied linguistics. It gradually builds up a unified description and explanation of formulaic language as a linguistic solution to a larger, non-linguistic, problem, the promotion of self. The book culminates in a new model of lexical storage, which accommodates the curiosities of non-native and aphasic speech. Parallel analytic and holistic processing strategies are the proposed mechanism which reconciles, on the one hand, our capacity for understanding and producing novel constructions using grammatical knowledge and small lexical units, and on the other, our use of prefabricated material which, though less flexible, also requires less processing.

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.

Language plays an essential role in how we portray our personalities. Through social interaction, others develop a picture of us based on our linguistic cues. However, when we interact in a foreign language and in a new country, limitations in linguistic and cultural knowledge can make self-presentation a more difficult task. This book explores the problems faced by language students embarking on 'study abroad' programmes, spending time in a foreign country and having to interact - and express their personalities - in a second language. Drawing on her extensive work with students, Valerie Pellegrino Aveni explores the factors that complicate self-presentation and the strategies students use for overcoming these, looking in particular at issues of anxiety, control, age, gender, risk-taking and self-esteem. Offering rich insights into the study abroad experience, this book will be an invaluable resource for professionals in second language acquisition, and for teachers and students preparing for study abroad.

Language plays an essential role in how we portray our personalities. Through social interaction, others develop a picture of us based on our linguistic cues. However, when we interact in a foreign language and in a new country, limitations in linguistic and cultural knowledge can make self-presentation a more difficult task. This book explores the problems faced by language students embarking on 'study abroad' programmes, spending time in a foreign country and having to interact - and express their personalities - in a second language. Drawing on her extensive work with students, Valerie Pellegrino Aveni explores the factors that complicate self-presentation and the strategies students use for overcoming these, looking in particular at issues of anxiety, control, age, gender, risk-taking and self-esteem. Offering rich insights into the study abroad experience, this book will be an invaluable resource for professionals in second language acquisition, and for teachers and students preparing for study abroad.

Study abroad is often seen as a crucial dimension of language learning - developing communicative proficiency, language awareness, and intercultural competence. The author provides an overview and assessment of research on language learning in study abroad settings, reviewing the advantages and constraints of perspectives adopted in this research.

Synthesizing the theory behind and methodology for conducting judgment tests, Using Judgments in Second Language Acquisition Research aims to clarify the issues surrounding this method and to provide best practices in its use. The text is grounded on a balanced and comprehensive background of the usage of judgment data in the past up through its present-day applications. SLA researchers and graduate students will find useful a chapter serving as a "how-to" guide for a variety of situations to conduct research using judgments, including ways to optimize task design and examples from successful studies. Lucid and practical, Using Judgments in Second Language Acquisition Research offers guidance on a method widely used by SLA researchers, both old and new to the field.

Doing Replication Research in Applied Linguistics is the only book available to specifically discuss the applied aspects of how to carry out replication studies in Applied Linguistics. This text takes the reader from seeking out a suitable study for replication, through deciding on the most valuable form of replication approach, to its execution, discussion, and writing up for publication. A step-by-step decision-making approach to the activities guides the reader through the replication research process from the initial search for a target study to replicate, through the setting up, execution, analysis, and dissemination of the finished work.

In The Gestural Origin of Language, Wilcox and Armstrong use evidence from and about sign languages to explore the origins of language as we know it today. According to their model, it is sign, not spoken languages, that is the original mode of human communication. The authors demonstrate that modern language is derived from practical actions and gestures that were increasingly recognised as having the potential to represent and hence to communicate. In other words, the fundamental ability that allows us to use language is our ability to use pictures of icons, rather than linguistic symbols. Evidence from the human fossil record supports the authors' claim by showing that we were anatomically able to produce gestures and signs before we were able to speak fluently. Although speech evolved later as a secondary linguistic communication device that eventually replaced sign language as the primary mode of communication, speech has never entirely replaced signs and gestures.

The book focuses on investigating pragmatic learning, teaching and testing in foreign language contexts. The volume brings together research that investigates these three areas in different formal language learning settings. The number and variety of languages involved both as the first language (e.g. English, Finnish, Iranian, Spanish, Japanese) as well as the target foreign language (e.g. English, French, German, Indonesian, Korean, Spanish) makes the volume specially attractive for language educators in different sociocultural foreign language contexts. Additionally, the different approaches adopted by the researchers participating in this volume, such as information processing, sociocultural, language socialization, computer-mediated or conversation analysis should be of interest to graduate students and researchers working in the area of second language acquisition.

As the number of Chinese students learning English increases worldwide, the need for teachers to understand the characteristics and challenges facing this group of learners grows. This is particularly true for those students moving from an English as a Foreign Language context to an English as a Second Language/International Language one where they experience academic, linguistic and sociocultural transitions. Drawing on over 20 years' experience teaching English courses to Chinese learners, the author aims to highlight key findings to aid understanding, improve teachers' practice and offer pedagogical recommendations. Using students' voices, the book covers: how the traditional Chinese culture of learning plays a role; how new learning contexts provide opportunities and empowerment; how learners' beliefs and strategies are interconnected; how their motivation and identity underscore the power of real and imagined communities, and finally, that affect matters, showing how learners are propelled by the trajectory of their emotions. The book cites from the rich data collected over a five-year period to authenticate the findings and recommendations but also to give voice to this group of learners to challenge the stereotype of the passive "Chinese learner". The essential insights contained within are useful for pre- and in-service teachers of English and researchers interested in language education around the world.