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.

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 testing and assessment of language competence continues to be a much debated issue in foreign language teaching and research. This book is the first one to address the testing of four important dimensions of foreign language education which have been left largely unconsidered: learner autonomy, intercultural competence, literature and literary competence, and the integration of content and language learning. Each area is considered through a theoretical framework, followed by two empirical studies, raising questions of importance to all language teachers: How can one test literary competence? Can intercultural competence be measured? What about the integrated assessment of content-and-language in CLIL and teaching? Is progress in autonomous learning skill gaugeable? The book constitutes essential reading for anyone interested in the testing and assessment of seemingly largely untestable aspects of foreign language competence.

The use of literary texts in language classrooms is firmly established, but new questions arise with the transfer to remote teaching and learning. How do we teach literature online? How do learners react to being taught literature online? Will new genres emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic? Is the literary canon changing? This volume celebrates the vitality of literary and pedagogic responses to the pandemic and presents research into the phenomena observed in this evolving field. One strand of the book discusses literary outputs stimulated by the pandemic as well as past pandemics. Another strand looks at the pedagogy of engaging learners with literature online, examining learners of different ages and of different proficiency levels and different educational backgrounds, including teacher education. Finally, a third strand looks at the affordances of various technologies for teaching online and the way they interact with literature and with language learning. The contributions in this volume take literature teaching online away from static lecturing strategies, present numerous options for online teaching, and provide research-based grounding for the implementation of these pedagogies.

The testing and assessment of language competence continues to be a much debated issue in foreign language teaching and research. This book is the first one to address the testing of four important dimensions of foreign language education which have been left largely unconsidered: learner autonomy, intercultural competence, literature and literary competence, and the integration of content and language learning. Each area is considered through a theoretical framework, followed by two empirical studies, raising questions of importance to all language teachers: How can one test literary competence? Can intercultural competence be measured? What about the integrated assessment of content-and-language in CLIL and teaching? Is progress in autonomous learning skill gaugeable? The book constitutes essential reading for anyone interested in the testing and assessment of seemingly largely untestable aspects of foreign language competence.