The contributions to the volume examine in detail diverse aspects of second language education, ranging from a focus on the basic contributions of linguistic theory and research to our understanding of second language learning and teaching on the one hand, to a series of reviews of innovative language education practices in selected regions of the world on the other.

This volume, one of eight in a series entitled Encyclopedia of Language and Education, examines spoken language as a field of study, looking at the various ways in which the place of talk can be theorized in education, and examining the way talk is actually done in educational settings. Given the centrality of literacy-based practices in schools, a book focusing on talk brings quite different and important perspectives to the study of education. Talk is something that has often been devalued and taken for granted. What becomes evident throughout the papers included in this volume is that talk is of central importance in establishing identities and the cultures in which those identities are located. However, because people are unused to reflexively examining the way they talk, there is a serious disjuncture between what they believe talk should achieve and what can be seen to be achieved in actual talk in educational settings.

Literacy is the second volume of the Encyclopedia of Language and Education, the first attempt to overview an area which has emerged as a coherent and exciting field of study in the last two decades. While forming part of a series of eight volumes, Literacy also stands on its own, drawing on some 25 state-of-the-art reviews of current concerns in the study of literacy prepared by leading writers and researchers.

The book is organised in four main sections: Reading, Writing, The Social Context of Literacy and Literacy Teaching in Selected Regions. The approach is multidisciplinary, drawing on insights from fields as diverse as anthropology and computer science, sociolinguistics and psychology. The international flavour of the volume is reflected not only in the choice of contributors from eleven different countries but also in the emphasis throughout on the impact of globalization on our understanding of literacy.

This publication examines spoken language as a field of study, looking at the various ways in which we can both theorize the place of talk in education, and examine the way talk is actually done in educational settings. Given the centrality of literacy-based practices in schools, a book focusing on talk brings quite different and important perspectives to the study of education. Talk is something that has all too often been devalued and taken for granted. What becomes evident throughout the papers included in this volume is that talk is of central importance in establishing identities and the cultures in which those identities are located. However, because we are unused to reflexively examining the way we talk, there is a serious disjuncture between what we believe talk should achieve and what can be seen to be achieved in actual talk in educational settings.

The present volume seeks to enable language and education practitioners, researchers, and interested lay readers alike to get a sense of the range of issues being pursued in language and education research and the array of methods employed to do so. A major assumption of the volume is that both micro and macro perspectives and both social and linguistic levels of analysis are critical for an understanding of the interaction between language and education. It is organized in four parts, focusing in turn on language and education in relation to society, variation, culture, and interaction. The contributing scholars hail from five continents and nine countries; they represent a great diversity of linguistic, cultural, and disciplinary traditions. For all that, what is most impressive about this volume is the unity of purpose and outlook with regard to the central role of language as both vehicle and mediator of educational processes and to the need for continued and deepening research into the limits and possibilities that implies.

In many parts of the world, it is common for a child to grow up speaking a local language at home, another in the market place, adding another to her repertoire as a lingua franca, and then adding a language of wider communication such as English or French if she continues her formal schooling.
The contributions to the volume examine in some detail diverse aspects of second language education, ranging from a focus on the basic contributions of linguistic theory and research to our understanding of second language learning and teaching on the one hand, to a series of reviews of innovative language education practices in selected regions of the world on the other.
For the purposes of this volume, second language education has been defined operationally to encompass education which occurs in those settings and situations in which a dominant language is offered as a second language (e.g., ESL in England or the United States whether as a subject of study or a vehicle through which other material is studied), as well as those cases in which an official, but not necessarily dominant, language is mandated (e.g., French or English in certain parts of the Middle East or the Mahgreb). The contributions also focus mainly, albeit not exclusively, on second language education for school-aged learners.

This book offers a comprehensive perspective on metalinguistic knowledge and processes, and presents a coherent argument for building an element of language awareness into the language curriculum at all educational levels. It offers a balanced perspective on first and second language acquisition, classroom talk, language use in the multicultural work place, translation, Esperanto, whole language, historical perspectives, critical pedagogy, the education of language teachers, the teaching of grammar, phonology, and writing.

This volume provides a comprehensive account of the implementation of bilingual education programmes in countries throughout the world. Bilingual programs have been implemented to achieve a variety of educational and social goals in different contexts. Some programmes are intended to support the maintenance of national minority languages or to revitalize languages whose long-term survival is threatened; others aim to help recent immigrants succeed academically while making the transition to instruction taught primarily through the majority language of the society. In addition, bilingual programmes have been used to teach additional languages to students from the majority or dominant language group. Similar theoretical principles underlie the development of bilingual conversational and academic skills in all these diverse contexts. For academics, graduate students, and policy-makers, this volume clearly outlines the social and educational goals that can be achieved through bilingual education. It also highlights the need to take account of the complex political context of inter-group relationships within which bilingual programs are inevitably embedded.

Using English Words examines the impact that the life histories of people have on their vocabulary. Its starting point is the taken-for-granted fact that the vocabulary of English falls into two very different sections. Randolph Quirk mentions this striking incompatibility between the Anglo Saxon and the Latinate elements in English: "the familiar homely-sounding and typically very short words" that we learn very early in life and use for most everyday purposes; and "the more learned, foreign-sounding and characteristically rather long words" (1974, p. 138). It is mainly the second type of word that native speakers start learning relatively late in their use of English, usually in the adolescent years of education, and keep on learning. It is mainly the one type of word, rather than the other, that ESL/ EFL students have more difficulty with, depending on their language background. This book shows how discursive relations, outside education, 'position' people through their vocabularies. Some are prepared for easy entry into lifetime prospects of relative privilege and educational success, while others are denied entry. In writing this book, I share an aim with other writers who observe the many discontinuities that exist between discursive practices in communities outside schools, and the discursive demands that schools make (e. g. Hamilton et a1. [19931, Heath [1983], Luke [19941, Philips [1983], Romaine [1984], Scollon & Scollon [1981]).

This volume covers basic fields of Sociolinguistics and the Sociology of Language; both macro- and micro-domains are presented in the fields of language teaching, minority languages, and problems of language acquisition as well as practical issues of curricula planning and textbook writing. The most prominent scholars in these fields provide extensive descriptions of the important literature, and of the basic questions in the respective domains, as well as examples of ongoing research, and discuss future possible developments in these fields. This book addresses students and active scholars in the social sciences as well as public officials in education, language teachers and textbook writers, therefore both theoreticians and practitioners.