Understanding how people learn and fail to learn second and foreign languages is increasingly recognised as a critical social and psycholinguistic issue. Second languages are vitally important to diverse groups of people, ranging from refugees to college students facing foreign language requirements. This book provides a synthesis of empirical findings on second and foreign language learning by children and adults, emphasising the design and execution of appropriate research.

This book provides a synthesis of empirical findings on second and foreign language learning by children and adults, emphasizing the design and execution of appropriate research.

Through clear and comprehensive grammar explanations, extensive practice exercises, and lively communicative activities, Grammar Dimensions provides students with the language skills they need to communicate accurately, meaningfully, and appropriately.

The Grammar Book introduces teachers and future teachers to English grammatical constructions. This highly acclaimed text, used both as a course book and as a grammar reference guide, is suitable for all teachers of English. What sets it apart from other grammar books is its unique pedagogical focus: It describes not only how each grammatical construction is formed, but also its meaning and its use. Grammar is seen to be a resource for making meaning in textually and socially appropriate ways.

Introduces key concepts in complex systems theory to readers concerned with language, its acquisition, and its use. Complex Systems and Applied Linguistics demonstrates the applicability and usefulness of these concepts to a range of areas in applied linguistics including second language development, language teaching, and discourse analysis. It concludes with a chapter that inventories suitable approaches to research investigations.

A must-read for every language teaching professional, TEACHING LANGUAGE: FROM GRAMMAR TO GRAMMARING explores the regular, predictable elements of language as well as the potential creativity of its underlying system. By combining a wide range of view points with her own personal experiences and studies, Diane Larsen-Freeman challenges the static descriptive ideas of grammar, based on rules, and promotes the more fluid and dynamic notions of reason-driven grammaring, which she defines as "the ability to use grammar structures accurately, meaningfully, and appropriately." The reader is left not with an encyclopedic set of definitions, but rather with a deeper understanding of the organic nature of language and its acquisition, and a honed set of tools with which to approach language in language teaching.