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 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.

Modern language classrooms are currently dominated by the communicative method of language teaching. This reader draws together recent and newly commissioned papers to show the origins of communicative methodology, how it has developed, what its research justification is and how it can most effectively be used in the classroom. Various chapters examine the particular challenges of differentiation, teaching grammar, encouraging pupils to use the target language together and teaching a foreign language to children with special educational needs. The final section discusses ways of developing creativity in the modern languages classroom through the use of drama, creative writing and role play. Anyone involved in teaching modern languages will find this reader a rich source for reflection and good practice.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203060016

"Computers in Translation" is a comprehensive guide to the practical issues surrounding machine translation and computer-based translation tools. Translators, system designers, system operators and researchers present the facts about machine translation: its history, its successes, its limitations and its potential. Three chapters deal with actual machine translation applications, discussing installations including the METEO system, used in Canada to translate weather forecasts and weather reports, and the system used in the Foreign Technology Division of the US Air Force. This book should be of interest to academics and postgraduates studying translation studies, language and linguistics, and to technical publications managers, translators and technical authors.

Are you grappling with grammar? Are you perplexed by punctuation? Do you find it a constant challenge to keep your pupils engaged while teaching grammar effectively? Focusing on what you need to know in the classroom, Grammar Survival for Primary Teachers provides you with all of the knowledge and practical advice you'll need to teach grammar and punctuation effectively. Based on a successful, tried-and-tested format, this new book is designed especially for primary teachers and focuses on the requirements of the English National Curriculum for Key Stages 1 and 2. This book includes: clear explanations and examples of a range of different aspects of grammar and punctuation practical advice and teaching ideas for use in the classroom a strong focus on building knowledge and applying it to writing. Accessible and engaging, this new book will be essential reading for busy trainee, newly qualified and practising teachers alike. It is the perfect guide for those looking to improve both their pupils' and their own understanding of grammar.

Focusing on how teachers can improve the ways in which they plan their lessons, this book demonstrates how careful planning allows the further development of learning approaches. The author presents a clear understanding of how these approaches can be used by the teacher to assess themselves and their students learning through: careful consideration of how certain approaches to learning can improve a student's grasp of reading, writing, speaking and listening discussions on how theories and research from leading experts can be applied in the classroom advice on how to use government strategies and ultimately work beyond them to develop learning in the classroom an examination of learning for children of different abilities. Helping teachers to develop good practice and understanding of learning in a familiar subject context, this book is essential for all those concerned in the teaching of secondary English.

This set includes two essential resources for writers and editors: The Copyeditor's Handbook, now in its fourth edition, and The Copyeditor's Workbook, the new companion to the bestselling Handbook. Unstuffy, hip, and often funny, The Copyeditor's Handbook: A Guide for Book Publishing and Corporate Communications has become an indispensable resource both for new editors and for experienced hands who want to refresh their skills and broaden their understanding of the craft of copyediting. This fourth edition incorporates the latest advice from language authorities, usage guides, and new editions of major style manuals, including The Chicago Manual of Style. It registers the tectonic shifts in twenty-first-century copyediting: preparing text for digital formats, using new technologies, addressing global audiences, complying with plain language mandates, ensuring accessibility, and serving self-publishing authors and authors writing in English as a second language. The new edition also adds an extensive annotated list of editorial tools and references and includes a bit of light entertainment for language lovers, such as a brief history of punctuation marks that didn't make the grade, the strange case of razbliuto, and a few Easter eggs awaiting discovery by keen-eyed readers. The Copyeditor's Workbook: Exercises and Tips for Honing Your Editorial Judgment-a new companion to the Handbook-offers comprehensive and practical training in the art of copyediting for both aspiring and experienced editors. More than forty exercises of increasing difficulty and length, covering a range of subject matter, enable you to advance in skill and confidence. Detailed answer keys and explanations offer a grounding in editorial basics, appropriate usage choices for different contexts and audiences, and advice on communicating effectively and professionally with authors and clients. Whether the exercises are undertaken alone or alongside the new edition of The Copyeditor's Handbook, they provide a thorough workout in the essential knowledge and skills required of contemporary editors.

This systematic overview of the grammatical features of the Portuguese language is geared to the specific needs and problems of German-speaking students of Portuguese. Taking into account the recent Portuguese spelling reform, the new edition offers updated as well as additional linguistic examples and explanations.

Most English legal texts before 1600, and many from the seventeenth century are written in law French, a dialect which differs considerably both from current French and from old Norman French. Only two guides to law French were published , one in 1701 and the other in 1779: both were full of errors and omissions. This current manual is a revised and considerably enlarged version of the first edition which was published in 1779, the first law French manual to appear since the eighteenth century. The manual is the only current guide to the law French used in English law books between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, an essential reference tool for law libraries, students and practitioners of English legal history. This manual is a revised and considerably enlarged version of the 1979 edition. It is the only current guide to the law French used in English law books between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, and is an essential reference tool for law libraries, students and practitioners of English legal history.

The main goal of this study, first published in 1994, is to present a substantial part of the grammar of French. This goal is achieved by bringing together two aspects of syntactic investigation. First, the study focuses on a vast range of French clausal phenomena, including Object Raising constructions, Causative constructions of various types, Impersonal constructions, amongst many others. Second, the investigation is conducted within the framework of Relational Grammar. This title will be of interest to students of language and linguistics.

This is the International Edition of Understanding and Using English Grammar , Fifth Edition. This book is NOT to be sold in the United States. For nearly forty years, Understanding and Using English Grammar has been the go-to grammar resource for students and teachers alike. Its time-tested approach blends direct grammar instruction with carefully sequenced practice to develop all language skills. New to This Edition Pretests at the start of each chapter enable learners to check what they already know. Updated grammar charts reflect current usage and highlight differences between written and spoken English. A new chapter on article usage. A variety of high-interest readings include reviews, articles on current topics, and blogs that focus on student success. Additional incremental practice helps learners better grasp concepts, while thematic exercises and integrated tasks offer more contextualized language use. Step-by-step writing activities are supported by writing tips and pre-writing and editing tasks. MyEnglishLab (access code provided in the book) Rich online practice for all skill areas: grammar, reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Instant feedback and remediation. Grammar videos. Bonus material not included in the Student Book, including additional expanded practice of gerunds and infinitives. Robust assessments. Gradebook and diagnostic tools.

An essential tool for every serious student of French as well as a source of endless fun and fascination, the book gives comprehensive and unexpurgated coverage of French slang - the real language of France.

First published in 1986. This comprehensive guide to written and spoken English offers details of usage in all countries where English used. The writer's, speaker's and reader's handy companion; the student's source. A book for browsing, for rules and for reference.

From Words to Grammar is a different introduction to grammar for students. Taking a word-based approach to grammar, this innovative book introduces the subject through the analysis of over a hundred of the most commonly used English words. Each unit focuses on a different word class, using an analysis of specific words which includes: an introduction to the grammar of each word; examples of real world usage featuring that word; exercises with answers. This unique approach not only introduces students to grammar but also provides them with an understanding of how grammar works in everyday English. Written by an experienced teacher and author, From Words to Grammar is ideal for all students of English Language.

How often teachers of speech must long to discover some fresh exercises - here is a book of exercises which have been proved in the author's classes.

Published in 1969 and in print ever since, this was the first specialist collection of tongue twisters and is still a great tool for warming up and improving general articulation.

In On the Tip of My Tongue, logophile and television star Tom Read Wilson takes a delicious dive into the etymology and usage of words, euphemisms and bon mots. Written with his trademark sparkling wit, the star of Celebs Go Dating and self-avowed word-lover presents a hilarious and fascinating guide which aims to leave you never lost for words again. Divided into sections spanning dating, personal development, show business, compliments, curses, and how to dodge offence while speaking your mind, this book will equip you with the words needed to navigate all the situations of modern life with style and grace. From treppenwitz (the German word for the feeling of a missed riposte in an argument) to Callipygian (a 17th Century word referring to someone with well shaped buttocks) to JOMO (the Joy of Missing Out), this guide covers a wide and varied range of words, from those with roots in antiquity to new ones being coined in the present day. With Tom's wit and lifelong love of words by your side, you'll always be able to pick the perfect word, phrase or quip, whether you are trying to understand the many metaphors for sex or trying to tell your mother you love her. This is a delightful and hilarious etymological solution to the dilemmas and conundrums of modern life and a must-read for every budding vocabularian.