This book examines the use of tasks in second language instruction in a variety of international contexts, and addresses the need for a better understanding of how tasks are used in teaching and program-level decision-making. The chapters consider the key issues, examples, benefits and challenges that teachers, program designers and researchers face in using tasks in a diverse range of contexts around the world, and aim to understand practitioners' concerns with the relationship between tasks and performance. They provide examples of how tasks are used with learners of different ages and different proficiency levels, in both face-to-face and online contexts. In documenting these uses of tasks, the authors of the various chapters illuminate cultural, educational and institutional factors that can make the effective use of tasks more or less difficult in their particular context.

The majority of children acquire language effortlessly but approximately 10% of all children find it difficult especially in the early or preschool years with consequences for many aspects of their subsequent development and experience: literacy, social skills, educational qualifications, mental health and employment. With contributions from an international team of researchers, this book is the first to draw together a series of new analyses of data related to children's language development, primarily from large-scale nationally representative population studies, and to bring a public health perspective to the field. The book begins with a section on factors influencing the patterns of language development. A second section explores continuity and change in language development over time. The third explores the impact on individuals with developmental language disorders (DLD), the effectiveness of available interventions, and broader issues about the need for equity in the delivery of services to those with DLD.

Focusing on the wildly successful Twilight series, this collection of scholarly essays examines the phenomenon from diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives. Particular attention is paid to cultural, social, and economic aspects of the series and to the recurrent messages about youth, gender roles, romance, and sexuality. Essays discuss race and religion, and provide audience analyses of young adult, adult, anti-, and international fans. Other chapters are political-economic examinations into celebrity, tourism, and publishing. With new research by established and rising scholars, this volume is a significant contribution to the growing field of youth studies and complements existing feminist cultural analyses of media texts.

Post-Global Network and Everyday Life explores everyday life in the new world order of global network. It argues that network has come into its own as a state of mind and a way of life - in sum, a cultural norm. As a result, it is no longer fitting to examine the network as an external force, but as a somewhat banal aspect of our everyday environment. The essays in this volume provide analyses of case studies that illustrate new - and old - ways in which everyday life is lived within network. Each chapter examines network as an always-already condition - we are the network, and as such are living in a state of post-global network.

Throughout the political spectrum, successful arguments often rely on fear appeals, whether implicit or explicit. Dominant arguments prey on people's fears - of economic failure, cultural backwardness, or lack of personal safety. Counterarguments feed on other fears, suggesting that audiences are being duped by emotional smokescreens. With chapters on the political, institutional, and cultural manifestations of fear, this book offers diverse investigations into how insecurity and the search for certainty shape contemporary political economic decisions, and explores how the rhetorical manipulation of such fears illuminates a larger struggle for social control.

A popular classroom assessment tool, this supplement is widely used by pre-service and in-service teachers to assess or test students' reading progress. It also serves as a practical guide for reading specialists and as a focus for in-service workshops. Unique to this text are its K-12 scope and its abundant strategies (including forms) for assessing students' vocabulary, phonics, and comprehension of text.

Written entirely in Spanish by instructors with years of experience, this textbook is a comprehensive guide to essay writing in Spanish. It provides advanced students of Spanish with the necessary tools to write fluently and effectively, both developing their reading, writing and critical thinking skills, and teaching them to practically analyse the rules of spelling, punctuation and grammar. It is organised into six chapters, progressing in level and complexity, which take students step-by-step through the writing process. Each chapter contains a number of features such as lists of new vocabulary, assessment checklists, questionnaires, and activities based on writing samples. It also includes an accompanying web resource, which features additional exercises for students, and a lesson plan and downloadable PowerPoint presentations for teachers. By drawing on the principles of grammar, this essential resource will help students become proficient writers, across a range of textual genres.

Pros and Cons: A Debaters Handbook offers a unique and invaluable guide to the arguments both for and against over 140 current controversies and global issues. Since it was first published in 1896 the handbook has been regularly updated and this nineteenth edition includes new entries on topics such as the right to possess nuclear weapons, the bailing out of failing industries, the protection of indigenous languages and the torture of suspected terrorists. Equal coverage is given to both sides of each debate in a dual column format which allows for easy comparison. Each entry also includes a list of related topics and suggestions for possible motions. The introductory essay describes debating technique, covering the rules, structure and type of debate, and offering tips on how to become a successful speaker. The book is then divided into eight thematic sections, where specific subjects are covered individually.

The Reading Biblical Greek Workbook is a companion resource to Reading Biblical Greek: A Grammar for Students. The workbook breaks up the Greek text of Mark 1-4 into manageable portions and provides the vocabulary and grammatical assistance required for beginning students. The Reading Biblical Greek Workbook is an integral part of the learning experience for students, it helps them to read and translate the Greek of the New Testament, and ultimately equips them to read the Greek New Testament itself. The student will have read and translated the whole of Mark 1-4 by the time they complete the workbook

Using second language (L2) socialization theory as a theoretical framework, this book investigates the ways in which four advanced learners of Japanese on an immersion program in the USA exercise their agency to pursue their language learning goals. The work presents their learner portraits and documents the different ways in which the four learners negotiate the meaning of their participations in the new community of practice, navigate and shape the trajectories of their learning and eventually achieve their goals of learning from their emic perspectives. The book re-examines Norton's (2000) constructs of investment, investigates its applicability and argues that L2 learners' desires and drives for learning an L2 are more diverse, unique and contextually situated than Norton's notion of investment alone can explain. The research will be of interest to researchers and students in the fields of applied linguistics, second language acquisition, foreign language education and language and literacy education.

This book deals with intercultural pragmatics and how both nonnative teachers (NNTs) and native teachers (NTs) may enhance their classroom instruction regarding target language (TL) pragmatics. It focuses primarily on the experiences of instructors as they teach their learners about the pragmatics of the TL, both in second and foreign language learning settings. It makes clear that there are aspects of teaching pragmatics where it may help to be an NT and other areas where it may help to be an NNT and proposes creative ideas that both sets of teachers may draw on to compensate for gaps in their knowledge. Further themes in the book include ideas for motivating students who want to learn about pragmatics, the role of technology in teaching and learning pragmatics, the role of learning strategies, the assessment of pragmatics and ways to research pragmatics. The book will be of interest to teachers, teacher educators and students interested in researching and improving the teaching of pragmatics.

Good writing engages as it informs and feature journalism offers writers the opportunity to tell deep, affecting stories that look beyond the immediate mechanics of who, what, where and when and explore the more difficult-and more rewarding- questions: how and why? Whether you're a blogger, a news journalist or an aspiring lifestyle reporter, a strong voice and a fresh, informed perspective remain in short supply and strong demand; this book will help you craft the kind of narratives people can't wait to share on their social media feeds. Writing Feature Stories established a reputation as a comprehensive, thought-provoking and engaging introduction to researching and writing feature stories. This second edition is completely overhauled to reflect the range of print and digital feature formats, and the variety of online, mobile and traditional media in which they appear. This hands-on guide explains how to generate fresh ideas; research online and offline; make the most of interviews; sift and sort raw material; structure and write the story; edit and proofread your work; find the best platform for your story; and pitch your work to editors. 'A wide-ranging, much-needed master class for anyone who tells true yarns in this fast-changing journalistic marketplace' - Bruce Shapiro, Columbia University 'Useful and thought provoking' - Margaret Simons, journalist and author 'A must read for any digital storyteller who wants to write emotive, engaging, believable content.' - Nidhi Dutt, foreign correspondent

Vocabulary is now well recognized as an important focus in language teaching and learning. Now in its third edition, this book provides an engaging, authoritative guide to the teaching and learning of vocabulary in another language. It contains descriptions of numerous vocabulary learning strategies, which are supported by reference to experimental research, case studies, and teaching experience. It also describes what vocabulary learners need to know to be effective language users. This new edition has been updated to incorporate the wealth of research that has come out of the past decade. It also includes a new chapter on out of-classroom learning, which explores the effect of the Internet and electronic resources on learning. This vital resource for all vocabulary researchers shows that by taking a systematic approach to vocabulary learning, teachers can make the best use of class time and help learners get the best return for their learning effort.

How teachers and students work together through discourse to construct their understanding of the context they live and work in will influence, in many different ways, the interaction within their classrooms. This book describes an indepth research that used ethno-methodology and conversation analysis to study three different groups of teachers. The study highlights the teachers' perspectives concerning heterogeneity in the classroom, using recordings of discussions concerning cultural and linguistic diversity. Moreover, this research examines the discourse participants' choice in the use (deployment) of categorical descriptions and reveals the speaker as positioned, interested and accountable for meaning construction. Thus, «portraits of differing preservice and inservice teachers' orientation towards linguistic and cultural diversity are analysed. By recognising these categorizations as partially bounded by previous knowledge and partially constructed in situ, the research sees meaning-making by teachers as a part of their lived work of teaching. It also reveals the social nature of these categorizations because they are an inseparable element of the socially constituted fabric of language in the environment of schooling and society.

It is clear that a proper understanding of what academic English is and how to use it is crucial for success in college, and yet students face multiple obstacles in acquiring this new 'code', not least that their professors often cannot agree among themselves on a definition and a set of rules. Understanding Language Use in the Classroom aims to bring the latest findings in linguistics research on academic English to educators from a range of disciplines, and to help them help their students learn and achieve. In this expanded edition of the original text, college educators will find PowerPoint presentations and instructor materials to enhance the topics covered in the text. Using these additional resources in the classroom will help educators to engage their students with this crucial, but frequently neglected, area of their college education; and to inform students about the unexamined linguistic assumptions we all hold, and that hold us back. You can find additional materials on the Resources tab of our website.

This book examines how Japanese learners of English learned about managing politeness while they were studying at language schools in New Zealand. Specifically, it investigates how they learned to produce and interpret a range of disagreement strategies during oppositional talk with native speakers of English. Employing a combined qualitative and quantitative approach to data analysis, the book discusses the initial pragmatic competence of the learners, and describes how their competence developed over a ten-week period. The book outlines some points of cultural divergence which may have influenced the direction and the extent of the learners' pragmatic development. It also sheds light on the language-acquisition strategies utilised by the learners during their tenure in the host culture. Most crucially, the book illuminates patterns of directness and indirectness in the learners' selected disagreement strategies. These patterns challenge the generally accepted theory that politeness always increases with social distance.

While there exists a wide range of material covering violence against women, very little scholarly attention has been paid to international media treatments of gendered violence. This volume addresses the gap by providing a broad overview of contemporary representations of gendered violence, enabling comparison and contrast in forms of violence and constructions of gender across a wide range of political and geographic contexts. From nonfictional accounts of the mass rapes during the Rwandan genocide to the sexual objectification of women in Serbian media and depictions of prostitute murders in the Chinese media, this book provides an overview of media representations of gendered violence around the globe. In addition to documenting specific challenges and shortcomings of mainstream representations, chapters present insight into the various forms of resistance and hope that exist in each particular area, and analytical essays open up new lines of inquiry by offering an assessment of the uneven changes that feminist activism has enabled around the world. Suitable for students and scholars in women's studies, gender studies, media, sociology, and education, Local Violence, Global Media can be used as a supplementary text in courses on media violence, sociology of media, gendered violence in media, and international perspectives on women's studies.

This book provides a practical and theoretical look at how media education can make learning and teaching more meaningful and transformative. It explores the theoretical underpinnings of critical media literacy and analyzes a case study involving an elementary school that received a federal grant to integrate media literacy and the arts into the curriculum. The ideas and experiences of working teachers are analyzed through a critical media literacy framework that provides realistic challenges and hopeful examples and suggestions. The book is a valuable addition to any education course or teacher preparation program that wants to promote twenty-first century literacy skills, social justice, civic participation, media education, or critical technology use. Communications classes will find it useful as it explores and applies key concepts of cultural studies and media education.

* Written by a leading scholar in composition theory * Accessible and jargon-free, the book presents a new approach to writing instruction based in linguistic research and theory * Includes sample texts and guidelines ready for writing teachers to use

Henning Nolke continue depuis 25 ans a faire d'importantes contributions a l'etude de la langue francaise, surtout dans le domaine de la linguistique enonciative. Les trente-six etudes recueillies ici se concentrent sur un choix de thematiques qui lui sont cheres, a savoir la polyphonie, la difference entre sens asserte et sens " montre ", l'argumentation dans la langue, les connecteurs et les adverbes de phrase, la semantique et la pragmatique textuelle, ainsi que la modularite. L'ouvrage reunit des contributions de specialistes travaillant en Belgique, au Danemark, en France, en Israel, en Norvege, au Royaume-Uni et en Suede, tous collegues, amis et admirateurs (parfois anciens etudiants) de Henning Nolke.

Introducing the concept of cinematic education - defined as pedagogy infused by the moving image - this volume explores the historical, theoretical, and practical basis for using film in kindergarten through post-secondary classrooms. Its scholarly inquiry into the meaning film can bring to teaching and learning extends a vast literature on film theory. At the same time it broadens the scope of cultural studies in education to include a more thorough consideration of the day-to-day political dimensions of the cinematic in K-12 public and private classrooms.

Die Tryin' traces the cultural connections between videogames, masculinity, and digital culture. It fuses feminist, psychoanalytic, Marxist, and poststructuralist theory to analyze the social imaginary that is produced by -- and produces -- a particular form of masculinity: boyhood. The author asserts that digital culture is a culturally and historically situated series of practices, products, and performances, all coalescing to produce a real and imagined masculinity that exists in perpetual adolescence, and is reflective of larger masculine edifices at work in politics and culture. Thus, videogames form the central object of study as consumer technologies of control and anxiety as well as possibility and subversion. Moving away from current games research, the book favors a game-specific approach that unites visual culture, cultural studies, and performance studies, instead of a sociological/structural inspection of the form.

The EU Expansion analyzes the communication strategies of candidates and parties in the 2004 European Parliamentary elections. These elections marked the first opportunity for the selection of representatives to the enlarged European Parliament. They also provided an important opportunity to study how candidates and parties strike a balance between communicating the need to preserve the sovereignty and culture of their countries with the increasing realization that Europe can only preserve its significance in the world by forging a unified economic and political federation. Research and analysis from both longstanding EU nations and those entering for the first time are provided. Chapters focus on the background and significance of the elections; the content of the party and candidate communications in representative countries; news media coverage of the elections; the effects of these communications on voters; and the unique perspectives of how the elections were covered and perceived around the world.

This book is an insider's guide to how the comic book industry works. You'll learn how comic book superheroes are created and the deeper meanings they represent. You'll follow the development of sequential art storytelling - from caveman wall paintings to modern manga and cinematic techniques. Here you will explore comics in all forms: those flimsy pamphlets we call comic books; thick graphic novels; Japanese manga; and blockbuster movies featuring epic battles between good and evil. But behind it all, you'll discover how comics are an intellectual property business, the real money found in licensed bedsheets and fast-food merchandise, heart-pounding theme park rides and collectible toys, video games, and Hollywood extravaganza featuring such popular superheroes as Spider-Man, Superman, X-Men, and Batman.