The goal of foreign language teaching is expanding from communicative competence towards an intercultural action competence. Essential in the new orientation is the shift towards a more balanced emphasis between the external factors in the learning environment and the personal capacity, conceptions, beliefs and assumptions inside the learner's mind. As part of the changes, assessment is seen as an important means of enhancing the elearning processes, emphasising the role of refelctive self-assessment. The text explores and integrates the necessary knowledge base and practices in foreign language education in terms of the basic concepts of experiential learning, intercultural learning, autobiographical knowledge and teacher development, together with the philosophical underpinnings of foreign language education.

New Directions for Research in Foreign Language Education brings together contributions by reputed scholars that examine the challenges, opportunities, and benefits of teaching and learning foreign languages. With a particular focus on languages other than English, the book looks at the socio-political dimension of language learning and teaching and the need to re-theorize multilingualism for our age. The volume includes a range of perspectives, from language teaching as an act of reconciliation to language learning across the lifespan, from innovations in assessment and curriculum to critical appraisals of pedagogy and textbook materials. Each chapter presents a clear case study drawn from diverse contexts to illustrate the different concerns of the contributors. The book is a valuable resource for all students, teachers, teacher educators and researchers who share an interest in researching multilingualism and the different facets of teaching and learning foreign languages.

Learning through a foreign language is recognized as one means of significantly enhancing competence in that language. This book presents European perspectives on means of structuring curricula which integrate content and language learning. It also provides details of the outcomes from such progammes and describes the current and future challanges ahead of wider scale adoption of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL).

This book describes how to change the way in which educators conduct business in the classroom. Our current educational systems lack ways to reach today's learners in relevant, meaningful ways. The five approaches in this book inspire and motivate students to learn. The authors provide in-depth descriptions into these overlapping approaches for experiential learning: active learning, problem-based learning, project-based learning, service learning, and place-based education. Each of these five approaches includes an element of student involvement and attempts to engage students in solving problems. The chapters are presented in a consistent, easy-to-read format that provides descriptions, history, research, ways to use the approach, and resources. This book will help educators transform their classrooms into dynamic learning environments.

"This important new book provides a critical overview of recent classroom-centered research and its implications for the teaching and learning of languages. Chaudron synthesizes and evaluates crucial research about the way student and teacher behaviours affect language learning and discusses research methods. Second Language Classrooms will be of vital interest to researchers, language teachers, and curriculum specialists, as well as readers with a general interest in education, linguistics, sociology, or psychology."-- Font no determinada.

Experience and Education is the best concise statement on education ever published by John Dewey, the man acknowledged to be the pre-eminent educational theorist of the twentieth century. Written more than two decades after Democracy and Education (Dewey's most comprehensive statement of his position in educational philosophy), this book demonstrates how Dewey reformulated his ideas as a result of his intervening experience with the progressive schools and in the light of the criticisms his theories had received. Analyzing both "traditional" and "progressive" education, Dr. Dewey here insists that neither the old nor the new education is adequate and that each is miseducative because neither of them applies the principles of a carefully developed philosophy of experience. Many pages of this volume illustrate Dr. Dewey's ideas for a philosophy of experience and its relation to education. He particularly urges that all teachers and educators looking for a new movement in education should think in terms of the deeped and larger issues of education rather than in terms of some divisive "ism" about education, even such an "ism" as "progressivism." His philosophy, here expressed in its most essential, most readable form, predicates an American educational system that respects all sources of experience, on that offers a true learning situation that is both historical and social, both orderly and dynamic.

Dewey's idea of Project-based Learning (PBL) was introduced into the field of second language education nearly two decades ago as a way to reflect the principles of student-centered teaching (Hedge, 1993). Since then, PBL has also become a popular language and literacy activity at various levels and in various contexts (see Beckett, 1999; Fried-Booth, 2002; Levis & Levis, 2003; Kobayashi, 2003; Luongo- Orlando, 2001; Mohan & Beckett, 2003; Weinstein, 2004). For example, it has been applied to teach various ESL and EFL skills around the world (e.g., Fried-Booth, 2002). More recently, PBL has been heralded as the most appropriate approach to teaching content-based second language education (Bunch, et al., 2001; Stoller, 1997), English for specific purposes (Fried-Booth, 2002), community-based language socialization (Weinstien, 2004), and critical and higher order thinking as well as problem-solving skills urged by the National Research Council (1999). Despite this emphasis, there is a severe shortage of empirical research on PBL and research-based frameworks and models based on sound theoretical guidance in general and second and foreign language education in particular (Thomas, 2000). Also missing from the second and foreign language education literature is systematic discussion of PBL work that brings together representative work, identifying obvious gaps, and guiding the field toward future directions. This, first of its kind, volume bridges these obvious gaps through the original work of international scholars from Canada, Israel, Japan, Singapore, and the US.

This book contributes to the body of knowledge concerning individual learner differences by addressing the issue of learning styles in developing a second language. It comprises five chapters. The notion of style, together with its place among other individual differences and its relation to learning strategies, is presented in Chapter 1. The reasons for researching styles are also delineated in this chapter. Chapter 2 describes simple (one-dimensional) models of learning styles, contrary to Chapter 3, in which two-dimensional (compound) models are presented. Multi-dimensional (complex) models of learning styles are the focus of Chapter 4. Each model discussed in Chapters 2 through 4 is accompanied by an outline of its significance to second language educators, as demonstrated in earlier studies. The final, fifth chapter is devoted to the discussion of the practical exploitation of the learning style awareness in second language education. The options suggested include accommodating learners’ styles, stretching them (by exposing the students to the less familiar and less preferred options), and mixtures of both approaches. The book will be of interest to applied linguists, psycholinguists and language teaching practitioners, as well as tertiary level students interested in finding out the ways in which learning styles account for linguistic achievement.

Language teaching approaches, methods and procedures are constantly undergoing reassessment. New ideas keep emerging as the growing complexity of the means of communication and the opportunities created by technology put language skills to new uses. In addition, the political, social and economic impact of globalisation, the new demands of the labour market that result from it, the pursuit of competitiveness, the challenges of intercultural communication and the diversification of culture have opened new perspectives on the central role that foreign languages have come to play in the development of contemporary societies. This book provides an insight into the latest developments in the field and discusses the new trends in foreign language teaching in four major areas, namely methods and approaches, teacher training, innovation in the classroom, and evaluation and assessment.

This unique volume utilizes the UNESCO Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) framework to illustrate successful integration of sustainability education in post-secondary foreign language (FL) learning. Showcasing a variety of approaches to using content-based instruction (CBI) in college-level courses, this text valuably demonstrates how topics relating to environmental, social, and cultural dimensions of sustainability can be integrated in FL curricula. Chapters draw on case studies from colleges throughout the US and consider theoretical and practical concerns relating to models of sustainability-based teaching and learning. Chapters present examples of project-, problem-, and task-based approaches, as well as field work, debate, and reflective pedagogies to enhance students’ awareness and engagement with sustainable development issues as they acquire a foreign language. Insights and recommendations apply across languages and highlight the potential contribution of FL learning to promote sustainability literacy amongst learners. This text will benefit researchers, academics, and educators in higher education with an interest in Modern Foreign Languages, sustainability education, training, and leadership more broadly.