The narrowing of English language education curriculum in many contexts has negatively impacted classroom teaching and learning. High-stakes standardized testing, scripted curricula, and the commodification of English have converged to challenge socially meaningful classroom literacy instruction that promotes holistic development. Although in different ways, these factors have shaped the teaching of English as both first and second language. How can English educators respond? This book argues that the first step is to take account of the broader policy, political and cultural landscape and to identify the key constraints affecting teachers, students and parents. These will set the broad parameters for developing local pedagogic approaches, while still recognizing the constraints that actively push against them. Using Singapore English language teaching as a case study, this book illustrates how this process can unfold, and how media literacy principles were vernacularized to design English classroom pedagogies that stretched the bounds of what is acceptable and possible in the local context.

Using qualitative data collected from more than twenty universities across the US, Writing Support for International Graduate Students describes and theorizes agency- and advocacy-driven practices, programs, and policies that are most effective in helping international students learn graduate-level writing and communication skills. It uses compelling narratives and cases to illustrate a variety of program models and support practices that fostered the students' process of academic transition and success. Employing an ecological framework, the book seeks to advance academic conversation about how writing scholars/instructors and program administrators, as well as other academic service professionals working with this student body, can formulate policies, develop programs, and implement practices that best help these students grow as writers and scholars in their disciplines.

In this accessible introduction to Vygotskian sociocultural theory, narratives illuminate key concepts of the theory. These key concepts include mediation; Zone of Proximal Development; collaborative dialogue and private speech; everyday and scientific concepts; the interrelatedness of cognition and emotion; activity theory; and assessment. A final chapter provides readers with an opportunity to consider two additional narratives and apply the SCT concepts that they have become familiar with. We hear from learners, teachers and researchers in a variety of languages, contexts, ages and proficiencies. Intended for graduate and undergraduate audiences, this new edition of the textbook includes controversies in the field, improved questions for collaborative discussion and provides updated references to important work in the literature of second language teaching, learning and research.

Code Switching, the alternating use of two or more languages ation, has become an increasingly topical and important field of research.
Now available in paperback, Code-Switching in Conversation brings together contributions from a wide variety of sociolinguistics settings in which the phenomenon is observed. It addresses not only the structure and the function, but also the ideological values of such bilingual behaviour. The contributors question many views of code switching on the empirical basis of many European and non European contexts. By bringing together linguistics, anthropological and socio-psychological research, they move towards a more realistic conception of bilingual conversation action.

Related link: http://www.udc.es/dep/lx/cac/c-s/

The presence of students for whom the school language is not their first language creates unique challenges and opportunities for teachers. This book provides an accessible guide to multilingual teaching using Linguistically Appropriate Practice (LAP) in diverse classrooms worldwide. It is firmly grounded in the latest research on multilingual learners and takes a realistic approach to teaching in linguistically diverse schools today. The author argues that successful multilingual teaching is an option for all teachers, and that it has benefits for every child in the classroom, as well as the wider school community. The book: - provides profiles of LAP in action around the world; - explains the relationship between theory and multilingual practice; - lays out the characteristics of the LAP teacher and the LAP classroom; - discusses challenges that have been identified by teachers using LAP in their classrooms; - provides a step-by-step guide to implementing and enriching LAP; - includes resources to support multilingual teaching and learning. This book is an invaluable support and inspiration for practising teachers and trainee teachers. It will help them transform their classrooms into multilingual environments where all children have equal opportunity to participate, learn and grow.

This book investigates first language (L1) and second language (L2) use in Chinese university classrooms, focusing on the experiences of four Chinese EFL teachers who were teaching non-English major students at four different proficiency levels. It examines these four teachers' actual use of L1 and L2, including the distribution of their L1 and L2 use; the circumstances, functions and grammatical patterns of their language use; and their language use across different frames of classroom discourse. It also explores their attitudes and beliefs regarding this issue in depth, as well as their own perceptions of and reasons for their language use and possible influencing factors. Through its detailed analysis of the teachers' language use, as well as their respective beliefs and decision-making techniques, this book contributes to L2 teachers' professional development and L2 teaching in general, especially with regard to establishing a pedagogically principled approach to L1 and L2 use.

During the past decades, literacy has gradually become a major concern all over the world. Though there is a great diversity in both the distribution and degree of literacy in different countries, there has been an increasing awareness of the number of illiterates and the consequences of being illiterate. However, literacy is no longer seen as a universal trait. When one focuses on culturally-sensitive accounts of reading and writing practices, the concept of literacy as a single trait does not seem very feasible. A multiplicity of literacy practices can be distinguished which are related to specific cultural contexts and associated with relations of power and ideology. As such, literacy can be seen as a lifelong context-bound set of practices in which an individual's needs vary with time and place.
This volume explores the use of literacy outside the mainstream in different contexts throughout the world. It is divided into four sections. Section 1 presents an anthropological perspective--analyzing the society and the individual in a society. Section 2 presents a psychological perspective--focusing on the individuals themselves and analyzing the cognitive and affective development of young children as they acquire literacy in their first and second languages. Section 3 presents an educational perspective--highlighting the variations in educational approaches in different societies as well as the outcomes of these approaches. Section 4 summarizes the studies presented in this volume. Both theoretical issues and educational implications related to the development of literacy in two languages are discussed. An attempt is also made to open up new directions in the study of literacy development in multilingual contexts by bringing these various disciplinary perspectives together.

"I can say with certainty that this book will add a compelling sense of depth and texture to the existing body of research in first and second language literacy." --Patricia Richard-Amato, California State University at Los Angeles Varied Voices is an ethnographic study of language and literacy learning in a culturally and linguistically diverse Moroccan school. There, children and teachers turn classrooms into social spaces as they work to build learning communities. Suitable for MATESOL courses and in-service training, Varied Voices is a must-read for all instructors working with language minority students at the elementary and secondary school levels.

During the past decades, literacy has gradually become a major concern all over the world. Though there is a great diversity in both the distribution and degree of literacy in different countries, there has been an increasing awareness of the number of illiterates and the consequences of being illiterate. However, literacy is no longer seen as a universal trait. When one focuses on culturally-sensitive accounts of reading and writing practices, the concept of literacy as a single trait does not seem very feasible. A multiplicity of literacy practices can be distinguished which are related to specific cultural contexts and associated with relations of power and ideology. As such, literacy can be seen as a lifelong context-bound set of practices in which an individual's needs vary with time and place.
This volume explores the use of literacy outside the mainstream in different contexts throughout the world. It is divided into four sections. Section 1 presents an anthropological perspective--analyzing the society and the individual in a society. Section 2 presents a psychological perspective--focusing on the individuals themselves and analyzing the cognitive and affective development of young children as they acquire literacy in their first and second languages. Section 3 presents an educational perspective--highlighting the variations in educational approaches in different societies as well as the outcomes of these approaches. Section 4 summarizes the studies presented in this volume. Both theoretical issues and educational implications related to the development of literacy in two languages are discussed. An attempt is also made to open up new directions in the study of literacy development in multilingual contexts by bringing these various disciplinary perspectives together.

In 1945 Japan had to adjust very rapidly to sudden defeat, to the arrival of the American Occupation and to the encounter with the English language, together with a different outlook on many aspects of society and government. This scholarly book is based on in-depth interviews with people, now aged, who were school students at the time of the Occupation and who experienced first-hand this immense cultural change. The book considers the nature of the changing outlook, including democratization, the new role for the Japanese Emperor and all this represented for the place of tradition in Japanese life and the growing emphasis on individualism away from collectivism. It discusses the changing system of education itself, including new structures and new textbooks, and relates the feelings of the participants as they came to terms with defeat and the language and culture of the former enemy. Overall, the book provides a fascinating insight into a key period of Japanese history.

The first book of its kind, Learner English on Computer is intended to provide linguists, students of linguistics and modern languages, and ELT professionals with a highly accessible and comprehensive introduction to the new and rapidly-expanding field of corpus-based research into learner language. Edited by the founder and co-ordinator of the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE), the book contains articles on all aspects of corpus compilation, design and analysis. The book is divided into three main sections; in Part I, the first chapter provides the reader with an overview of the field, explaining links with corpus and applied linguistics, second language acquisition and ELT. The second chapter reviews the software tools which are currently available for analysing learner language and contains useful examples of how they can be used. Part 2 contains eight case studies in which computer learner corpora are analysed for various lexical, discourse and grammatical features. The articles contain a wide range of methodologies with broad general application. The chapters in Part 3 look at how Computer Learner Corpus (CLC) based studies can help improve pedagogical tools: EFL grammars, dictionaries, writing textbooks and electronic tools. Implications for classroom methodology are also discussed. The comprehensive scope of this volume should be invaluable to applied linguists and corpus linguists as well as to would-be learner corpus builders and analysts who wish to discover more about a new, exciting and fast-growing field of research.

Code-switching, the alternating use of two or more languages within conversation, has become an increasingly topical field of research. This volume brings together contributions from a wide variety of sociolinguistic settings in which this phenomenon of "conversational code-switching" is observed. It addresses the structure, function and ideological value of such bilingual behaviour. The contributors question many views of code-switching on the empirical basis of many European and non-European contexts. By bringing together linguistic, anthropological and socio-psychological research, they aim to move towards a more realistic conception of bilingual conversational action. The international contributors include: Mark Sebba, Li Wei, Melissa Moyer, Yael Mashler, Ben Rampton and Jan Blommaert. This text should be of interest to students of bilingualism, sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics.

The vast majority of work in theoretical linguistics from a generative perspective is based on first language acquisition and performance. The vast majority of work on second language acquisition is carried out by scholars and educators working within approaches other than that of generative linguistics. In this volume, this gap is bridged as leading generative linguists apply their intellectual and disciplinary skills to issues in second language acquisition. The results will be of interest to all those who study second language acquisition, regardless of their theoretical perspective, and all generative linguists, regardless of the topics on which they work.

This edited volume has been compiled in honour of Professor Merrill Swain, one of the most prominent scholars in the field of second language acquisition (SLA) and second language (L2) education. For over four decades, her work has contributed substantially to the knowledge base of the field of applied linguistics, and her ideas have had a significant influence in a range of subfields, including immersion education, mainstream SLA, and sociocultural theory and SLA. The range of topics covered in the book reflects the breadth and depth of Swain's contributions, expertise and interests. The volume is divided into four parts: immersion education, languaging, sociocultural perspectives on L2 teaching and learning, and developments in language as social action.

Cultural Geography introduces culture from a geographical perspective. This text focuses on how cultures work in practice and looks at cultures embedded in real-life situations, as locatable, specific phenomena. Definitions of 'culture' are diverse and complex. Crang presents no single answer but explores a wealth of different cases and different approaches people have taken to various issues and ideas. Looking at how cultures are spread over, and make sense of, space, this book tracks the ideas, practices and objects that together form cultures - and how these cultures form identities for individuals and populations. Crang examines a range of scales as he considers the role of states, empires and nations, firms and corporations, shops and goods, books and films, in creating identities.
Cultural Geography looks at the way different processes come together in particular places and how those places develop meanings for people, whether at a global scale or the intimate scale of everyday life. Exploring the diversity and plurality of life in all its variegated richness; how the world, space and places are interpreted and used by people; and how those places then help to perpetuate the culture, Crang develops the relationship of change and the possibility that current societies may develop a more pick and mix relationship to culture.

Cultural Geography is the first book to introduce culture from a geographical perspective. It tracks the ideas, practices and objects that together form cultures - and how these cultures form identities for individuals and populations. Crang examines a range of scales as he considers the role of states, empires and nations, firms and corporations, shops and goods, books and films, in creating identities.
Cultural Geography looks at the way different processes come together in particular places and how those places develop meanings for people, whether at a global scale or the intimate scale of everyday life. Specifically designed for use on modular courses this text features clear writing, boxed case studies, chapter summaries, further reading guides and a glossary of key terms.

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.

This book presents an in-depth fieldwork-based study of the Greek language spoken by immigrants in Cairns, Far North Queensland, Australia. The study analyzes language contact-induced changes and code switching patterns, by integrating perspectives from contact linguistics and interactional approaches to language use and code switching. Lexical and pragmatic borrowing, code mixing, discourse-related and participant-related code switching, and factors promoting language maintenance are among the topics covered in the book. The study brings to light original data from a speech community that has received no attention in the literature and sheds light on the variation of Greek spoken in diaspora. It will appeal across disciplines to scholars and students in linguistics, anthropology, sociology, and migration studies.

This book provides a rich and unique longitudinal account of content and language integrated learning (CLIL). The chapters report on the findings from a large-scale, three-year research project undertaken at senior high school level in Sweden. The ecological perspective, with quantitative and qualitative methods, gives voice to both learners and teachers, as well as being an excellent critical example of how such longitudinal research might be carried out. Through emic and etic approaches, the book provides insights into language learning outcomes, both with regard to the target language English and the majority language Swedish; learner motivation among CLIL and non-CLIL students; effects of extramural exposure to English; issues in relation to assessment in CLIL and much more. As a whole, the book offers an unprecedented overview of learner outcomes and detailed insights into the comparison of CLIL and non-CLIL education. While it is embedded in the Swedish context, the nature of this study means that it has strong implications on an international basis.

This book grew out of the joys and challenges the author experienced as a Spanish/English bilingual teacher of culturally and linguistically diverse students. It tells what it is like to be a bilingual teacher. As a result, it helps other teachers and prospective teachers understand the complex nature of bilingual teaching, shares some successful teaching strategies that other teachers have used, and encourages teachers to find their own solutions despite limited support.
The book is structured in three parts. The introduction explains how the book evolved, defines its relation to other qualitative research, and offers suggestions for how to use the book. The second part consists of eight bilingual teachers' stories that provide a glimpse of them as people, their schools and programs, their successes and struggles, and their solutions and coping mechanisms within their contexts. It concludes with a discussion chapter that looks at the teachers' collective strengths and struggles comparatively, connecting these to broader issues. The final section presents bilingual education resources -- useful information for practitioners. This includes foundation texts on the theories and practices of bilingual education, demographic information, a glossary of bilingual education terms, listings of curricula, tests, and literature mentioned by the teachers, and professional network sources.

This book encourages readers to think about reading not only as an encounter with written language, but as a lifelong habit of engagement with ideas. We look at reading in four different ways: as linguistic process, personal experience, collective experience, and as classroom practice. We think about how reading influences a life, how it changes over time, how we might return at different stages of life to the same reading, how we might respond differently to ideas read in an L1 and L2. There are 44 teaching activities, all founded on research that explores the nature, value and impact of reading as an authentic activity rather than for language or study purposes alone. We consider what this means for schools and classrooms, and for different kinds of learners. The final part of the book provides practical stepping stones for the teacher to become a researcher of their own classes and learners. The four parts of the book offer a virtuous join between reading, teaching and researching. It will be useful for any teacher or reader who wishes to refresh their view of how reading fits in to the development of language and the development of a reading life.

The impact of globalisation is increasingly evident through both mass migration and the social, political, and economic changes that have produced new and growing social divides. The increased mobility and the opening of national borders that have arisen as part of these changes has also meant a rise in the diversification of migration (superdiversity) in all its forms. The multi-sited flows of people have also led to the flow of knowledge, culture, and languages. English - as a global language - has taken on a prominent role in the neoliberal discourses of commodification, value and distinction, and the role of language in the reproduction of social inequalities. This edited volume explores a range of issues related to the role of language. In particular, it addresses competency in English and multilingualism, both of which facilitate success for skilled migrants in the workplace and enable them to contribute to development efforts in their home communities. In more general terms, the book looks at the communicative competencies and language resources which skilled migrants require in order to engage productively in professional and development endeavours. It examines the notion that English is the linguistic capital for skilled migration, given its global status in higher education, development, and professional communication. This book was originally published as a special issue of Globalisation, Societies and Education.

Before conclusions about Spanish in the United States can be drawn, individual communities must be studied in their own contexts. That is the goal of "Puerto Rican Discourse." One tendency of previous work on Spanish in the United States has been an eagerness to generalize the findings of isolated studies to all Latino communities, but the specific sociocultural contexts in which people -- and languages -- live often demand very different conclusions. The results of Torres' work indicate that the Spanish of Puerto Ricans living in Brentwood continues to survive in a restricted context. Across the population of Brentwood -- for Puerto Ricans of all ages and language proficiencies -- the Spanish language continues to assume an important practical, symbolic, and affective role.
An examination of the structural features of 60 oral narratives -- narrative components and the verbal tenses associated with each, overall Spanish verb use, and clause complexity -- reveals little evidence of the simplification and loss across generations found in other studies of Spanish in the United States. English-dominant Puerto Ricans are able Spanish language narrators demonstrating a wide variety of storytelling skills. The structure of their oral narratives is as complete and rich as the narratives of Spanish-dominant speakers.
The content of these oral narratives of personal experience is also explored. Too often in studies on U.S. Spanish, sociolinguists ignore the words of the community; the focus is usually on the grammatical aspects of language use and rarely on the message conveyed. In this study, oral narratives are analyzed as constructions of gendered and ethnically marked identities. The stories demonstrate the contradictory positions in which many Puerto Ricans find themselves in the United States. All of the speakers in this study have internalized, to a greater or lesser extent, dominant ideologies of gender, ethnicity, and language, at the same time that they struggle against such discourse. The analysis of the discourse of the community reveals how the status quo is both reproduced and resisted in the members' narratives, and how ideological forces work with other factors, such as attitudes, to influence the choices speakers make concerning language use. A special feature of this book is that transcripts are provided in both Spanish and English.
This volume combines ethnographic, quantitative, and qualitative discourse methodologies to provide a comprehensive and novel analysis of language use and attitudes of the Brentwood Puerto Rican community. Its rich linguistic and ethnographic data will be of interest to researchers and teachers in cultural communication, ethnic (Hispanic-American) studies, sociolinguistics, and TESL.

This book relates the author's stories about how languages have integrated her being, and defined and formed her sense of self. The idea of writing autobiographical stories of her multilingual life came from her long-term commitment to foreign language teaching and from a recent, extremely rich and valuable experience teaching English to immigrants in the U.S. While reading and studying various aspects of second-language-related-theory -- linguistics, psychology, anthropology, and sociolinguistics literature -- the author realized how estranged language learners are from all the research, speculations, hypotheses, and achievements of scholarship.
A Russian immigrant, the author tells stories to her ESL students to help them understand why and at what price successful language acquisition and acculturation is realistic. Not only can students learn from her stories which encourage discoveries about their own behaviors or problems, but they might want to respond and tell about their own struggles with a foreign language. By becoming writers and interpreters of her text and by making it their own, students can construct their own virtual texts. The stories told throughout are those of a language learner, who is also a linguist and language teacher. As such, they can bridge the gap between second language research and practical teaching and learning. Moreover, this book can help initiate language learners along with their teachers into scholarship.
Second language teachers and graduate students preparing for a teaching career might see this book as an illustration and validation of the studied theory and an inner voice of their students at the same time. Multidisciplinary by nature, it can also be used in several college courses such as cultural anthropology, anthropo- and socio-linguistics, sociology, multicultural education, ethnography, bilingualism, and the study of immigrant experience. There are numerous applications of the book in the educational field at various levels of adult learning programs which might be determined by the objectives and by the instructor's vision of it in the curriculum. It is also intended as a message to the general public and to all thinking individuals in search of identity. It will popularize the idea of the importance of foreign language learning, language education, linguistic literacy, and metalinguistic awareness, of illuminating self-discovery through the treasure of multilingual experience, capable of giving birth to a new, sophisticated, spiritually complex and enriched multicultural identity.

This major new textbook offers an accessible introduction to many of the most interesting areas in the study of multilingualism. It consists of twelve lectures, written by leading researchers, each dedicated to a particular topic of importance. Each lecture offers a state-of-the-art, authoritative review of a subdiscipline of the field. The volume sheds light on the ways in which the use and acquisition of languages are changing, providing new insights into the nature of contemporary multilingualism. It will be of interest both to undergraduate and postgraduate students working in linguistics-related disciplines and students in associated social sciences.