In the tradition of "Desperate Housewives" and "Sex and the City," Kwitney's newest novel is about a Manhattan woman who discovers it's not as easy to abandon men as she had thought.

The classic manifesto of the liberated woman, this book explores every facet of a woman's life.

How do people learn nonnative languages? Is there one part or function of our brains solely dedicated to language processing, or do we apply our general information-processing abilities when learning a new language? In this book, an interdisciplinary collaboration of scholars and researchers presents an overview of the latter approach to adult second language acquisition and brings together, for the first time, a comprehensive picture of the latest research on this subject. Clearly organized into four distinct but integrated parts, Mind and Context in Adult Second Language Acquisition first provides an introduction to information-processing approaches and the tools for students to understand the data. The next sections explain factors that affect language learning, both internal (attention and awareness, individual differences, and the neural bases of language acquisition) and external (input, interaction, and pedagogical interventions). It concludes by looking at two pedagogical applications: processing instruction and content based instruction. This important and timely volume is a must-read for students of language learning, second language acquisition, and linguists who want to better understand the information-processing approaches to learning a non-primary language. This book will also be of immense interest to language scholars, program directors, teachers, and administrators in both second language acquisition and cognitive psychology.

A language barrier is no match for love. Lauren Collins discovered this firsthand when, in her early thirties, she moved to London and fell for a Frenchman named Olivier—a surprising turn of events for someone who didn’t have a passport until she was in college. But what does it mean to love someone in a second language? Collins wonders, as her relationship with Olivier continues to grow entirely in English. Are there things she doesn’t understand about Olivier, having never spoken to him in his native tongue? Does “I love you” even mean the same thing as “je t’aime”? When the couple, newly married, relocates to Francophone Geneva, Collins—fearful of one day becoming "a Borat of a mother" who doesn’t understand her own kids—decides to answer her questions for herself by learning French. When in French is a laugh-out-loud funny and surprising memoir about the lengths we go to for love, as well as an exploration across culture and history into how we learn languages—and what they say about who we are. Collins grapples with the complexities of the French language, enduring excruciating role-playing games with her classmates at a Swiss language school and accidently telling her mother-in-law that she’s given birth to a coffee machine. In learning French, Collins must wrestle with the very nature of French identity and society—which, it turns out, is a far cry from life back home in North Carolina. Plumbing the mysterious depths of humanity’s many forms of language, Collins describes with great style and wicked humor the frustrations, embarrassments, surprises, and, finally, joys of learning—and living in—French.

What pedagogic challenges and opportunities arise as gay, lesbian, and queer themes and perspectives become an increasingly visible part of English language classes within a variety of language learning contexts and levels? What sorts of teaching practices are needed in order to productively explore the sociosexual aspects of language, identity, culture, and communication? How can English language teachers promote language learning through the development of teaching approaches that do not presume an exclusively heterosexual world? Drawing on the experiences of over 100 language teachers and learners, and using a wide range of research and theory, especially queer education research, this innovative, cutting-edge book skillfully interweaves classroom voices and theoretical analysis to provide informed guidance and a practical framework of macrostrategies English language teachers (of any sexual identification) can use to engage with lesbian/gay themes in the classroom. In so doing, it illuminates broader questions about how to address social diversity, social inequity, and social inquiry in a classroom context.

Presenting a range of data obtained from secondary schools in the UK and US, this path-breaking book explores the role played by language in constructing sexual identities. Analysing the often complex ways in which homophobia, heterosexism and heteronormativity are enacted within school contexts, it shows that by analysing language, we can discover much about how educators and students experience sexual diversity in their schools, how sexual identities are constructed through language, and how different statuses are ascribed to different sexual identities.

This volume begins by locating critical inquiry within the epistemological and methodological history of second language study. Subsequent chapters portray researcher-participant exploration of identity and agency while challenging inequitable policies and practices. Research on internationalization, Englishization, and/or transborder migration address language policies and knowledge production at universities in Hong Kong, Standard English and Singlish controversies in Singapore, media portrayals of the English as an Official Language movement in South Korea, transnational advocacy in Japan, and Nicaraguan/Costa Rican South to South migration. Transnational locations of identity and agency are fore-fronted in narrative descriptions of Korean heritage language learners, a discursive journey from East Timor to Hawaii, and a reclaimed life history by a Chinese peasant woman. Labor union and GLBT legal work illustrate discourses that can hinder or facilitate agency and change. Hawaiian educators advocate for indigenous self-determination through revealing the political and social meanings of research. California educators describe struggles at the front-lines of resistance to policies and practices harmful to marginalized children. A Participatory Action Research (PAR) project portrays how Latina youth in the U.S. “resist wounding inscriptions” of the intersecting emotional and physical violence of homes, communities, and anti-immigrant policies and attitudes. Promoting agency through drawing on diversity resources is modeled in a bilingual undergraduate PAR project. The volume as a whole provides a model for critical research that explores the multifaceted and evolving nature of language identities while placing those traditionally known as participants at the center of agency and advocacy.

2016 Winner of the Norma Fleck Award for Canadian Children’s Non-Fiction 2016 ALA Stonewall Book Award, Honor Book 2016 ALA Notable Children's Book A comic book for kids that includes children and families of all makeups, orientations, and gender identities, Sex Is a Funny Word is an essential resource about bodies, gender, and sexuality for children ages 8 to 10 as well as their parents and caregivers. Much more than the "facts of life" or “the birds and the bees," Sex Is a Funny Word opens up conversations between young people and their caregivers in a way that allows adults to convey their values and beliefs while providing information about boundaries, safety, and joy. The eagerly anticipated follow up to Lambda-nominated What Makes a Baby, from sex educator Cory Silverberg and artist Fiona Smyth, Sex Is a Funny Word reimagines "sex talk" for the twenty-first century.

This lively and accessible textbook provides a clear introduction to the relationship between language and sexuality.

This monograph is a theoretical and empirical investigation into the mechanisms and causes of successful and unsuccessful adult second language acquisition. Couched within a generative framework, the study explores how a learner's first language and the age at which they acquire their second language may contribute to the L2 knowledge that they can ultimately attain. The empirical study focuses on a group of very advanced L2 speakers, and through a series of tests aims to discover what underpins their near mastery of grammatical gender and other grammatical properties. The book explores an account of persistent selective divergence based on the idea that child and adult learners are fundamentally similar, except that in adults the L1 plays the role of a fairly rigid filter of the linguistic input. The impossibility of representing the new target language other than by using the building blocks of the previously established L1 is argued to be the main reason why near but not totally native like language representations are formed and become established in adult L2 learners.