This second volume presents modern strategies in the teaching of English as a Second Language (ESL) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) from the perspectives of multi-cultural communication, linguistic theory and praxis. Several chapters in the book are taken from the session “ESL Studies” held at the 2015 and 2016 PAMLA (Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association) conferences. The collection, written by scholars from a range of countries, including Germany, Italy, Romania, Mexico, Russia, and the USA, examines current methods of English language learning from the perspectives of the global environment, cross-cultural analysis and modern digital space.

Examines the rise and fall of English as the most widely spoken language in human history and discusses what language will overtake its dominance as English-speaking nations are challenged by the rising wealth of Brazil, Russia, India and China.

Educational linguistics is transcultural, with research in the field adopting an international scope. Educational systems, on the contrary, are culture-bound. As a consequence, actual teaching differs across countries, and sometimes even among provinces, local educational authorities, and schools. However, a globalized world needs to share the various meanings of “knowing a language” and “teaching a language”, as language is the main factor of both cultural identity and national and international interaction. The framework offered here is built on eight “hypotheses”, logical models that provide the potential common core of a non-culture-bound theory of language education and of language teaching. The book thus suggests a common terminology, some common principles, and a basic paradigm to be shared in both theoretical and practical research in edu-linguistics, consequently going beyond the borders implied by such titles as European framework, American standards, and Chinese guidelines.

Through integrating different perspectives on language change, this book explores the enormous on-going linguistic upheavals in the wake of the global dominance of English. Combining empirical research with theoretical approaches, it will appeal to researchers and graduate students of English, and also of other languages studying language change.

This manual contains overviews on language acquisition and distinguishes between first- and second-language acquisition. It also deals with Romance languages as foreign languages in the world and with language acquisition in some countries of the Romance-speaking world. This reference work will be helpful for researchers, students, and teachers interested in language acquisition in general and in Romance languages in particular.

This collection gives a diversified account of world literature, examining not only the rise of the concept, but also problems such as the relation between the local and the universal, and the tensions between national culture and global ethics. In this context, it focuses on the complex relationship between Chinese literature and world literature, not only in the sense of providing an exemplary case study, but also as an introspection and re-location of Chinese literature itself. The book activates the concept of world literature at a time when it is facing the rising modern day challenges of race, class and culture.

This book provides the first examination of sociolinguistic competence and the acquisition of native-like variability in an English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) context. It presents data from email exchanges between Swiss speakers (with German, French and Italian mother tongues) to allow for a greater understanding of which features of discourse are source language-related and which are learning-related.

A sweeping account of the global rise of English and the high-stakes politics of languageSpoken by a quarter of the world's population, English is today's lingua franca- - its common tongue. The language of business, popular media, and international politics, English has become commodified for its economic value and increasingly detached from any particular nation. This meteoric "riseof English" has many obvious benefits to communication. Tourists can travel abroad with greater ease. Political leaders can directly engage their counterparts. Researchers can collaborate with foreign colleagues. Business interests can flourish in the global economy.But the rise of English has very real downsides as well. In Europe, imperatives of political integration and job mobility compete with pride in national language and heritage. In the United States and England, English isolates us from the cultural and economic benefits of speaking other languages.And in countries like India, South Africa, Morocco, and Rwanda, it has stratified society along lines of English proficiency.In The Rise of English, Rosemary Salomone offers a commanding view of the unprecedented spread of English and the far-reaching effects it has on global and local politics, economics, media, education, and business. From the inner workings of the European Union to linguistic battles over influence inAfrica, Salomone draws on a wealth of research to tell the complex story of English - and, ultimately, to argue for English not as a force for domination but as a core component of multilingualism and the transcendence of linguistic and cultural borders.

The global spread of English has resulted in contact with an enormous variety of different languages worldwide, leading to the creation of many new varieties of English. This book takes an original look at what happens when speakers of these different varieties interact with one another.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the linguistic situation in Europe was one of remarkable fluidity. Latin, the great scholarly lingua franca of the medieval period, was beginning to crack as the tectonic plates shifted beneath it, but the vernaculars had not yet crystallized into the national languages that they would later become, and multilingualism was rife. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world, languages were coming into contact with an intensity that they had never had before, influencing each other and throwing up all manner of hybrids and pidgins as peoples tried to communicate using the semiotic resources they had available. Of interest to linguists, literary scholars and historians, amongst others, this interdisciplinary volume explores the linguistic dynamics operating in Europe and beyond in the crucial centuries between 1400 and 1800. Assuming a state of individual, societal and functional multilingualism, when codeswitching was the norm, and languages themselves were fluid, unbounded and porous, it explores the shifting relationships that existed between various tongues in different geographical contexts, as well as some of the myths and theories that arose to make sense of them.