"Routledge Applied Linguistics" is a series of comprehensive resource books, providing students and researchers with the support they need for advanced study in the core areas of English language and Applied Linguistics.
Each book in the series guides readers through three main sections, enabling them to explore and develop major themes within the discipline. Section A," Introduction," establishes the key terms and concepts and extends readers' techniques of analysis through practical application. Section B, "Extension," brings together influential articles, sets them in context, and discusses their contribution to the field. Section C, "Exploration," builds on knowledge gained in the first two sections, setting thoughtful tasks around further illustrative material. This enables readers to engage more actively with the subject matter and encourages them to develop their own research responses. Throughout the book, topics are revisited, extended, interwoven and deconstructed, with the reader's understanding strengthened by tasks and follow-up questions.
"Second Language Acquisition":
* introduces the key areas in the field, including: multilingualism, the role of teaching, the mental processing of multiple languages, and patterns of growth and decline
*explores the key theories and debates and elucidates areas of controversy
*gathers together influential readings from key names in the discipline, including: Vivian Cook, William E. Dunn and James P. Lantolf, S.P. Corder, and Nina Spada and Patsy Lightbown.
Written by experienced teachers and researchers in the field, "Second Language Acquisition" is an essential resource for students and researchers of appliedlinguistics.

This book examines the role of computers in language learning and teaching in higher education. In particular, it considers the pedagogical and practical value of designing a language-learning environment around computer technology. Whereas considerable research has already been undertaken in analysing the value of individual computer tools and packages (such as e-mail), the study gives a broad appraisal of their individual and collective value, without being too exhaustive. Using quantitative and qualitative data, based on research visits to three universities, Ulster, Cambridge and Toronto, this study provides examples of effective practice in the area of the exploitation of Information and Communication Technology for language learning and teaching. It draws on the experience of these three institutions, as well as the findings of current literature in this area, in order to establish a set of essential criteria that institutions need to meet when creating a computer-based environment. Although these criteria are based on experience with language-learning environments, they are essentially generic in nature and may be applied to other computer-based learning environments.

Contemporary Japanese is a textbook series for beginning students of Japanese at the college or high school level. It is intended for classroom use as well as self-study. Each lesson in the books is very short--meant to be covered in just an hour--and has a single, clearly-defined objective. All lessons make use of the "active discovery" approach which encourages rapid learning through "guess and try" problem-solving and participation as opposed to rote memorization. This highly effective method uses real-life conversations that make learning fun by involving you in a conversation with your peers. It also removes the fear of saying something wrong! This book, the second volume in the series, contains 45 short lessons grouped into 12 chapters--each of which presents a wide variety of activities and exercises and yet is designed to be covered in a single session. This "daily multivitamin" approach to language learning makes it easy to track your progress and to review later! Free online audio files can be downloaded, providing native speaker recordings and giving correct pronunciations for the dialogs and vocabulary in each lesson. In this book you'll learn more about: Kanji and their meanings Japanese verb forms Comparison and stating preferences Using common set phrases and making requests Evaluating facts and expressing opinions Sightseeing, food cravings and tastes Insights into Japanese culture Accompanying the textbook is Contemporary Japanese Workbook Volume 2--it serves as a supplementary material as well as a standalone comprehensive workbook for practicing and reviewing the language.

For years Richard Lederer has entertained fans of the English language with his keen insights, commonsense advice, and witty patter. Now Lederer and Richard Dowis take readers on another journey through our most "wiggy" of languages. How many times have we all heard the word "viable" used in company meetings? The authors show us how "viable" was at one time extracted from medical books, where it is actually defined as "capable of living," and placed into our consumer marketplace. Then there is confusion between "lay" and "lie," which the authors clear up once and for all. These and dozens fo delightful examples make this book pure pleasure for language buffs, writers, and teachers.

Experiential Learning in Foreign Language Education explores and integrates the necessary knowledge base and practices in foreign language education in terms of the basic concepts of experiential learning, intercultural learning, autobiographical knowledge and teacher development, together with the philosophical underpinnings of foreign language education.

This volume brings together the current theoretical interest in reconceptualizing second and foreign language learning from a sociocultural perspective on language and learning, with practical concerns about second and foreign language pedagogy. It presents a set of studies whose focus is on the empirical description of particular practices constructed in classroom interaction that promote the learning of a second or foreign language. The authors examine in detail the processes by which the learning of additional languages is accomplished in the interaction of a variety of classrooms and in a variety of languages. Not only will the findings from the studies reported in this volume help to lay a foundation for the development of a more expansive, sociocultural model of second and foreign language learning, but on a more practical level they will help language educators in creating a set of principles for identifying and sustaining classroom interactional practices that foster additional language development.
The volume is distinguished in three ways:
* Following a Vygotskyan perspective on development, the studies assume that language learning is a fundamentally pragmatic enterprise, intrinsically linked to language use. This breaks from a more traditional understanding of second and foreign language learning, which has viewed learning and use as two distinct phenomena. The importance of classroom interaction to additional language development is foregrounded.
* The investigations reported in this book are distinguished by their methodological approach. Because language learning is assumed to be a situated, context-sensitive, and dynamic process, the studies do not rely on traditional experimental methods for collecting and analyzing data, but rather, they involve primarily the use of ethnographic and discourse analytic methods.
* The studies focus on interactional practices that promote second and foreign language learning. Although a great deal of research has examined first language learning in classrooms from a sociocultural perspective, little has looked at second and foreign language classrooms from such a perspective. Thus there is a strong need for this volume of studies addressing this area of research.
Researchers, teacher educators, and graduate students across the fields of second and foreign language learning, applied linguistics, and language education will find this book informative and relevant. Because of the programmatic implications arising from the studies, it will also appeal to teacher educators and teachers of second and foreign languages from the elementary to the university levels.

This volume brings together the current theoretical interest in reconceptualizing second and foreign language learning from a sociocultural perspective on language and learning, with practical concerns about second and foreign language pedagogy. It presents a set of studies whose focus is on the empirical description of particular practices constructed in classroom interaction that promote the learning of a second or foreign language. The authors examine in detail the processes by which the learning of additional languages is accomplished in the interaction of a variety of classrooms and in a variety of languages. Not only will the findings from the studies reported in this volume help to lay a foundation for the development of a more expansive, sociocultural model of second and foreign language learning, but on a more practical level they will help language educators in creating a set of principles for identifying and sustaining classroom interactional practices that foster additional language development.
The volume is distinguished in three ways:
* Following a Vygotskyan perspective on development, the studies assume that language learning is a fundamentally pragmatic enterprise, intrinsically linked to language use. This breaks from a more traditional understanding of second and foreign language learning, which has viewed learning and use as two distinct phenomena. The importance of classroom interaction to additional language development is foregrounded.
* The investigations reported in this book are distinguished by their methodological approach. Because language learning is assumed to be a situated, context-sensitive, and dynamic process, the studies do not rely on traditional experimental methods for collecting and analyzing data, but rather, they involve primarily the use of ethnographic and discourse analytic methods.
* The studies focus on interactional practices that promote second and foreign language learning. Although a great deal of research has examined first language learning in classrooms from a sociocultural perspective, little has looked at second and foreign language classrooms from such a perspective. Thus there is a strong need for this volume of studies addressing this area of research.
Researchers, teacher educators, and graduate students across the fields of second and foreign language learning, applied linguistics, and language education will find this book informative and relevant. Because of the programmatic implications arising from the studies, it will also appeal to teacher educators and teachers of second and foreign languages from the elementary to the university levels.

This volume offers the most comprehensive, up-to-date description of the wide array of second language programs currently available to undergraduate students in the United States and abroad. It brings together, for the first time, detailed descriptions of programs in foreign language, English as a second language (ESL), dual language (bilingual), American Sign Language, Native American, and heritage languages. Addressing both theory and practice, the volume presents the historical development, current practices, and future directions of each type of program, along with detailed case studies. For second language teachers, academic administrators, and teacher educators, this "Handbook" provides information that will be useful in making instructional and programmatic planning decisions.

This volume offers the most comprehensive, up-to-date description of the wide array of second language programs currently available to undergraduate students in the United States and abroad. It brings together, for the first time, detailed descriptions of programs in foreign language, English as a second language (ESL), dual language (bilingual), American Sign Language, Native American, and heritage languages. Addressing both theory and practice, the volume presents the historical development, current practices, and future directions of each type of program, along with detailed case studies. For second language teachers, academic administrators, and teacher educators, this "Handbook" provides information that will be useful in making instructional and programmatic planning decisions.

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.

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.

An activity-based introduction to stylistics, this textbook explains some of the topics in literary linguistics and helps students in analysing written texts. How can you tell good writing - the excellent, the brilliant and the ingenious - from bad writing - the weak, the banal and the confusing? By looking at the technique and the craft of writing, Language in Literature examines the ways in which language is organised to create particular meanings or effects. Covering a range of topics - naming patterns, modality and evaluation, the structure of simple narratives, the recording of character speech and thought, the dynamics of dialogue, presuppositions and textual revision - the book presents the structuring principles within the English language. Activities and end-of-chapter commentaries encourage a 'learning by doing' approach and equips the reader with the main linguistic terms necessary for the analysis of literary and non-literary texts.

This distinctive cross-linguistic examination of spelling examines the cognitive processes that underlie spelling and the process of learning how to spell. The chapters report and summarize recent research in English, German, Hebrew, and French. Framing the specific research on spelling are chapters that place spelling in braod theoretical perspectives provided by cognitive neuroscience, psycholinguistic, and writing system-linguistic frameworks. Of special interest is the focus on two major interrelated issues: how spelling is acquired and the relationship between reading and spelling. An important dimension of the book is the interweaving of these basic questions about the nature of spelling with practical questions about how children learn to spell in classrooms. A motivating factor in this work was to demonstrate that spelling research has become a central challenging topic in the study of cognitive processes, rather than an isolated skill learned in school. It thus brings together schooling and learning issues with modern cognitive research in a unique way. testing, children writing strings of letters as a teacher pronounces words ever so clearly. In parts of the United States it can also bring an image of specialized wizardry and school room competition, the "spelling bee." And for countless adults who confess with self-deprecation to being "terrible spellers," it is a reminder of a mysterious but minor affliction that the fates have visited on them. Beneath these popular images, spelling is a human literacy ability that reflects language and nonlanguage cognitive processes. This collection of papers presents a sample of contemporary research across different languages that addresses this ability. To understand spelling as an interesting scientific problem, there are several important perspectives. First, spelling is the use of conventionalized writing systems that encode languages. A second asks how children learn to spell. Finally, from a literacy point of view, another asks the extent to which spelling and reading are related. In collecting some of the interesting research on spelling, the editors have adopted each of these perspectives. Many of the papers themselves reflect more than one perspective, and the reader will find important observations about orthographies, the relationship between spelling and reading, and issues of learning and teaching throughout the collection.

The chapters in this volume are based on presentations made at a recent conference on Cognitive and Linguistic Foundations of Reading Acquisition: Implications for Intervention Research. This was the third in a series of meetings on the subject of brain development, language acquisition, reading, and dyslexia, with the embracing title of The Extraordinary Brain. The researchers who participated have made contributions to the theoretical and empirical understanding of how children learn to read. They were asked to address not only what they have learned from their research, but also to discuss unsolved problems. This dialogue prompted numerous questions of both a theoretical and applied nature, generated heated debate, and fuelled optimism about the important gains that have been made in the scientific understanding of the reading process, especially of the critical role played by phonological abilities.

The chapters in this volume are based on presentations made at a recent conference on cognitive and linguistic foundations of reading acquisition. The researchers who participated have all made contributions to the theoretical and empirical understanding of how children learn to read. They were asked to address not only what they have learned from their research, but also to discuss unsolved problems. This dialogue prompted numerous questions of both a theoretical and applied nature, generated heated debate, and fueled optimism about the important gains that have been made in the scientific understanding of the reading process, especially of the critical role played by phonological abilities.

Even the best wordsmiths can find themselves tripping over words that are commonly misused, mixed up or misspelled. Most of us have suffered the embarrassment of suddenly discovering that they have been using or spelling a word wrong for years, or, in some cases, their entire life. This useful reference untangles the mix-ups and misuses of language so that you can ensure you've got the word you're looking for, whether it's 'taught', 'taut', 'tort' or 'torte'. With definitions, examples of how to sharpen up text and improve your writing, lists of useful social media abbreviations and a discussion of unusual plurals, this playful look at the often bizarre and frustrating English language has got you covered. Word to the Wise will help you get your word use straight, whether you're writing a book, blog, email or text message.

The subject of this study is the language of commerce and diplomacy during the period from 1500 BCE to 1500 CE. Based on texts of chancery provenance, its aim is the identification of a linguistic sub-system that effected and informed the major channel of international relations. The standard procedures of contact and exchange generated a format that facilitated inter-lingual transfer of concepts and terms. Lingua Franca refers to the several natural languages that served as vehicle in the transfer, but also to the format itself.

In an attempt to fill the gap left by the many published studies on classroom second language research, this book explores a variety of human, social, and political issues involved in the carrying out of such studies. Many journals are chock-full of the results of classroom research, with evidence to support one claim or another about the efficacy of one teaching method or another. Many textbooks are replete with statistical procedures to be used, and with experimental designs to fit varying situations. Too often overlooked in these treatments are the human, social, and political issues involved in carrying out research in classrooms that are not one's own. What are the problems going to be when one attempts work such as this? What does one do on discovering that an administrator's agenda is different than one had thought? What does one do when a teacher resents intrusions into her classroom? This book offers a view on those kinds of issues, as presented and managed by successful classroom researchers themselves.
The authors present their own experiences including, on occasion, their trials and tribulations and how they dealt with them. They lay themselves open to criticism in doing so, but they make their contributions much the richer as well. The classroom contexts extend to different countries, and range from elementary schools to universities. Some of the issues presented are:
* the necessarily collaborative nature of the research;
* the question of meshing pedagogically sound and experimentally acceptable practices;
* the often strong possibility that political and social decisions will interrupt the research;
* the perennial question of reporting out the results; and
* the training of graduate student researchers.

This volume examines important themes in the current theoretical debates on the relationship of language and gender. It analyses this relationship across a range of different disciplinary perspectives from linguistics, literary theory, cultural studies and visual analysis. The focus of the book goes beyond an analysis of women's language to discuss the complexities of gendered language with chapters on lesbian poetics, the language of girls and boys and the relationship between gender and genre. In her introduction, Sara Mills discusses how language is analysed differently across a range of disciplines and she looks at the various meanings associated with the term gender. Two key chapters, by leading linguists in the area, Deborah Cameron and Jennifer Coates, focus the book on the current situation of the language and gender debate. Accessibly written, individual chapters are short, concise and clearly focused on an aspect of this debate. Language and Gender will be of interest to students and lecturers in a range of areas from Linguistics, Literature, Women's Studies, Gender Studies, Education and Social Sciences, providing them with the opportunity to survey other perspectives on the subject.

This volume was designed to identify the current limits of progress in the psychology of reading and language processing in an information processing framework. Leaders in their fields of interest, the chapter authors couple current theoretical analyses with new, formally presented experiments. The research -- cutting-edge and sometimes controversial -- reflects the prevailing analysis that language comprehension results in numerous levels of representation, including surface features, lexical properties, linguistic structures, and idea networks underlying a message as well as the situations to which a message refers. As a group, the chapters highlight the impact that input modality -- auditory or written -- has on comprehension. Finally, the studies also capture the evolution of new topic matter and ongoing debates concerning the competing paradigms, global proposals, and methods that form the foundation of the enterprise.
The book presents current accounts of research on word-, sentence-, and text-processing. It will prove informative for experimental psychologists as well as investigators in cognitive science disciplines such as computer science, linguistics, and educational psychology. The book will also be very helpful to graduate students who wish to develop expertise in the psychology of language processes. For them, it collects, in a single volume, readings that are representative of progress concerning many central problems in the field. As such, it is distinct from the numerous collected volumes that concentrate on a single issue. Complete author and subject indexes facilitate effective use of the volume.

This book tries to answer the question posed by Minsky at the beginning of "The Society of Mind: " "to explain the mind, we have to show how minds are built from mindless stuff, from parts that are much smaller and simpler than anything we'd considered smart." The author believes that cognition should not be rooted in innate rules and primitives, but rather grounded in human memory. More specifically, he suggests viewing linguistic comprehension as a time-constrained process -- a race for building an interpretation in short term memory.
After reviewing existing psychological and computational approaches to text understanding and concluding that they generally rely on self-validating primitives, the author abandons this objectivist and normative approach to meaning and develops a set of requirements for a grounded cognitive architecture. He then goes on to explain how this architecture must avoid all epistemological commitments, be tractable both with respect to space and time, and, most importantly, account for the diachronic and non-deterministic nature of comprehension. In other words, a text may or may not lead to an interpretation for a specific reader, and may be associated with several interpretations over time by one reader.
Throughout the remainder of the book, the author demonstrates that rules for all major facets of comprehension -- syntax, reference resolution, quantification, lexical and structural disambiguation, inference and subject matter -- can be expressed in terms of the simple mechanistic computing elements of a massively parallel network modeling memory. These elements, called knowledge units, work in a limited amount of time and have the ability not only to recognize but also to build the structures that make up an interpretation.
Designed as a main text for graduate courses, this volume is essential to the fields of cognitive science, artificial intelligence, memory modeling, text understanding, computational linguistics and natural language understanding. Other areas of application are schema-matching, hermeneutics, local connectionism, and text linguistics. With its extensive bibliography, the book is also valuable as supplemental reading for introductory undergraduate courses in cognitive science and computational linguistics.

'Combining postmodern critiques with whole language hopes, Alan Block routs the psychologists and pedagogues who have occupied American reading instruction for nearly a century and points out a way in which we can come to know ourselves and the world through reading.'--Patrick Shannon, Professor

During the last 20 years, there has been an enormous amount of research examining sources of coherence in reading. A major tenet of this work has been the distinction between two major sources of coherence. "Text-based" sources of coherence are contained within the text itself -- use of headings to indicate aspects of a text's macrostructure; "reader-based" sources of coherence encompass the information and strategies that the reader brings to the comprehension process. Many early models of reading comprehension emphasized text-based sources of coherence as a way of understanding how a representation of the text is constructed in memory. However, during the last decade, there has been a clear shift of theoretical perspective away from viewing reading comprehension as a process of representing a text to viewing comprehension as a process of representing what a text is about. This has led to a greater emphasis on reader-based sources of coherence. The purpose of this book is to bring together the large body of evidence addressing the roles of text-based and reader-based sources of coherence in reading comprehension. The contributors present the current state of cognitive theory and research on comprehension of discourse.