Electronic Inspection Copy available for instructors here Presented with the latest thinking and research on how children acquire their first language, the reader is taken from a standing start to the point where they can engage with key debates and current research in the field of child language. No background knowledge of linguistic theory is assumed and all specialist terms are introduced in clear, non-technical language. A theme running through the book is the nature-nurture debate, rekindled in the modern era by Noam Chomsky, with his belief that the child is born with a rich knowledge of language. This book is rare in its balanced presentation of evidence from both sides of the nature-nurture divide. The reader is encouraged to adopt a critical stance throughout and weigh up the evidence for themselves. Key features for the student include: boxes and exercises to foster an understanding of key concepts in language and linguistics; a glossary of key terms; suggestions for further reading; a list of useful websites at the end of each chapter; discussion points for use in class; and separate author and subject indexes.

Explaining how finances drive each decision in the real estate development process, this helpful industry guide recognizes the complexities and significant risks of each project and illustrates how to reconcile conflicting elements to ultimately achieve success. A 36-year real estate development veteran, author Charles Long shares the practical information and personal insights that he has gained over the course of his career, and weaves relevant real world examples into the text, helping to clarify the principles necessary to effectively manage a project in today’s financial landscape. Ideal both for those starting out in real estate development and experienced professionals who want to learn the theory behind the practice, this book offers a different perspective on making the monetary decisions that are involved in property development projects.

Bringing together a team of national experts, this volume offers a detailed look at the links between public land acquisition programs and efforts to yield smart growth outcomes in the USA. Various aspects of the land acquisition-smart growth linkage are investigated and the book describes model programs and makes recommendations for the adoption of land acquisition efforts nationally and internationally. It will appeal to those concerned with issues of urban sprawl, such as planners, policy makers, public officials, and citizen groups.

Examines language acquisition and development across a wide range of languages and contexts

The volume addresses developing knowledge and use of Hebrew from the dual perspective of typologically specific factors and of shared cross-linguistic trends, aimed at providing an overview of acquisition in a single language from infancy to adolescence while also shedding light on key issues in the field as a whole. Essentially non-partisan in approach, the collection includes distinct approaches to language and language acquisition (formal-universalist, pragmatic-usage based, cognitive-constructivist) and deals with a range of topics not often addressed within a single volume (phonological perception and production, inflectional and derivational morphology, simple-clause structure and complex syntax, early and later literacy, writing systems), with data deriving from varied research methodologies (interactive conversations and extended discourse, adult input and child output, longitudinal and cross-sectional corpora, structured elicitations). Each chapter provides background information on Hebrew-specific facets of the topic of concern, but typically avoids ethno-centricity by relating to more general issues in the domain. The book should thus prove interesting and instructive for linguists, psychologists, and educators, and for members of the child language research community both within and beyond the confines of Hebrew-language expertise.

Recent years have seen a revolution in our knowledge of how children learn to think and speak. In this volume, leading scholars from these rapidly evolving fields of research examine the relationship between child language acquisition and cognitive development. At first sight, advances in the two areas seem to have moved in opposing directions: the study of language acquisition has been especially concerned with diversity, explaining how children learn languages of widely different types, while the study of cognitive development has focused on uniformity, clarifying how children build on fundamental, presumably universal concepts. This book brings these two vital strands of investigation into close dialogue, suggesting a synthesis in which the process of language acquisition may interact with early cognitive development. It provides empirical contributions based on a variety of languages, populations and ages, and theoretical discussions that cut across the disciplines of psychology, linguistics and anthropology.

The book offers condensed summaries of twenty-three major skill acquisition and expertise development models presented by leading researchers during the last half a century of classic and new research. This book presents new researchers in learning, training, cognitive sciences, or education disciplines with a big picture starting point for their literature review journey. The book presents an easy-to-understand taxonomy of twenty-three models, giving new researchers a good bird’s eye view of existing models and theories. They can decide which direction to dig further. The reviews in this book are complemented with over 200 authentic sources, which a researcher read for a detailed and deeper dive and set the direction for further exploration. This book would also act as an essential reference for training & learning professionals and instructional designers to design research-based training curriculum to develop the skills of their staff. Chapter 1 of the book elaborates on how the processes of learning, skill acquisition, and expertise development are interwoven. Chapter 2 presents a classification system to categorize various models reviewed in the literature under five groups. Chapter 3 describes twelve models of skill and expertise acquisition which are represented in the form of stages used frequently in learning, training, and performance literature. The chapter also briefly discusses each model's implications toward developing the skills and expertise of a less proficient individual to a higher level of proficiency. Chapter 4 reviews practice-, time- or task-based models, which are theories or models suggesting that acquisition of knowledge & skills, development of expertise, and performance improvement is a function of nature of the practice, amount of time spent on the task and task type. Chapter 5 presents the factor-based models, suggesting the interplay of several factors that influence the acquisition of knowledge & skills, development of expertise, and performance improvement. Chapter 6 embarks on describing expert modeling-based models, suggesting modeling an expert through elicitation or guidance for the acquisition of knowledge & skills, development of expertise, and performance improvement. Chapter 7 covers some newer movements toward cognition-based models, which are theories or models focusing on mechanisms of cognitive learning for the acquisition of knowledge & skills, development of expertise, and performance improvement. Chapter 8 concludes the book by integrating views from various thought leaders to explain a famous staged skill acquisition model.