Current Trends in the Development and Teaching of the four Language Skills builds connections from theory in the four language skills to instructional practices. It comprises twenty-one chapters that are grouped in five sections. The first section includes an introductory chapter which presents a communicative competence framework developed by the editors in order to highlight the key role the four skills play in language learning and teaching. The next four sections each represent a language skill: Section II is devoted to listening, Section III to speaking, Section IV to reading and Section V to writing. In order to provide an extensive treatment of each of the four skills, each section starts with a theoretical chapter which briefly illustrates advances in the understanding of how each skill is likely to be learned and taught, followed by four didactically oriented chapters authored by leading international specialists. These pedagogical chapters deal specifically with four key topics: 1) areas of research that influence the teaching of a particular skill; 2) an overview of strategies or techniques necessary for developing a particular skill; 3) an approach to the academic orientation of a particular skill, and 4) unique aspects of teaching each skill. Moreover, all chapters incorporate two common sections: pre-reading questions at the beginning of the chapter in order to stimulate readers' interest in its content, and a section entitled suggested activities at the end of the chapter in order to allow readers put the ideas and concepts presented into practice. The accessible style and practical focus of the volume make it an ideal tool for teachers, teacher trainers, and teacher trainees who are involved in teaching the four language skills in a second or foreign language context.

In addition to the approaches and methods covered in the first edition, this edition includes new chapters, such as whole language, multiple intelligences, neurolinguistic programming, competency-based language teaching, co-operative language learning, content-based instruction, task-based language teaching, and The Post-Methods Era.

This volume presents seven alternative approaches to studying second language acquisition, and each approach is authored by a leading advocate for it in the field. Edited by Dwight Atkinson, and including contributions from James Lantolf ,Diane Larsen-Freeman, Gabriele Kasper and Johannes Wagner, Bonny Norton and Carolyn McKinney, Patricia Duff and Steven Talmy.

This book provides an overview of approaches to language and culture, and it outlines the broad interdisciplinary field of anthropological linguistics and linguistic anthropology. It identifies current and future directions of research, including language socialization, language reclamation, speech styles and genres, language ideology, verbal taboo, social indexicality, emotion, time, and many more. Furthermore, it offers areal perspectives on the study of language in cultural contexts (namely Africa, the Americas, Australia and Oceania, Mainland Southeast Asia, and Europe), and it lays the foundation for future developments within the field. In this way, the book bridges the disciplines of cultural anthropology and linguistics and paves the way for the new book series Anthropological Linguistics.

The analysis of language attitudes is important not only because attitudes can affect language maintenance and language change but also because such reflections and discussions can bring light to social, cultural, political and educational matters that require an interdisciplinary approach. This volume fills a crucial void in the field of Hispanic and Lusophone linguistics by introducing the latest production in the discipline of attitudes toward Spanish, Spanish sign language, Portuguese, Guarani and Papiamentu around the world, from South America and the Caribbean to the United States, Spain and Japan. The studies presented in this collection – a variety of sociolinguistic scenarios and methodological approaches – will make an important contribution to theoretical discussions on linguistic attitudes, specifically in the domains of language integration through education, language policy, and language maintenance. This book is intended for sociolinguists, social scientists and scholars in the humanities as well as graduate students enrolled in sociolinguistics courses.

The first steps toward merging the cognitive and social approaches to language processing.

Although usage-based approaches have been successfully applied to the study of both first and second language acquisition, to monolingual and bilingual development, and to naturalistic and instructed settings, it is not common to consider these different kinds of acquisition in tandem. The present volume takes an integrative approach and shows that usage-based theories provide a much needed unified framework for the study of first, second and foreign language acquisition, in monolingual and bilingual contexts. The contributions target the acquisition of a wide range of linguistic phenomena and critically assess the applicability and explanatory power of the usage-based paradigm. The book also systematically examines a range of cognitive and linguistic factors involved in the process of language development and relates relevant findings to language teaching. Finally, this volume contributes to the assessment and refinement of empirical methods currently employed in usage-based acquisition research. This book is of interest to scholars of language acquisition, language pedagogy, developmental psychology, as well as Cognitive Linguistics and Construction Grammar.

This volume explores how the traditional academic disciplines of linguistics, translation, literature and cultural studies can contribute to, or be integrated into, the teaching of a foreign language by means of innovative methodologies, techniques and instruments. The book begins with a selection of essays on applied linguistics that share some significant findings in the context of second or foreign language acquisition. It then examines the ways in which linguistics, translation theory, literature and cultural studies are brought into the foreign language classroom not just as objects of study but also as vehicles for language-learning. By presenting studies on four main foreign languages, English, Spanish, French and German, the collection offers, to the foreign language profession, an opportunity for the sharing and comparison of strategies across languages at both the secondary and higher education level. The text is a valuable resource for language teachers with a more philologically-oriented background who would like to learn how to apply their research knowledge and experience to the design and implementation of new methodological approaches.

Do you have EAL students in your class? Would you like guidance on teaching your subject to EAL students? With linguistic diversity on the increase, teachers from all subject areas and levels of school education are working with students for whom English is an additional language, helping them to develop their English for learning purposes. This book provides an invaluable and accessible resource for working with EAL students. It brings together the international experiences and expertise of a team of distinguished language educators who explore a range of teaching approaches and provide professionally-grounded practical advice. The chapters cover themes, references and pedagogic concerns common to teachers across the globe. This book will be of use to individual teachers who want to extend their knowledge and practice, and also as a set text for professional development programmes. Professor Constant Leung is Deputy Head of Department of Education and Professional Studies at King's College London. Angela Creese is Professor of Educational Linguistics in the School of Education at the University of Birmingham