This volume presents the very important issue of integrating culture into the second language classroom. Some of its chapters were originally presented at two symposia on culture learning, Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Culture learning in the Second Language Curriculum, held at the University of Minnesota in 1991 and 1994. Other chapters were developed at a third conference, Culture as the Core: Transforming the Language Curriculum. The latter brought scholars and practitioners together to reflect on the earlier theoretical discussions, refine those ideas in light of subsequent theoretical developments, and translate theory into classroom practice.

The contributions to this book concern the documentation and revitalization of endangered languages and the archiving of documented language materials. The anthology focuses mainly on endangered Oceanic languages, with articles on Vanuatu by Darrell Tryon and the Marquesas by Gabriele Cablitz, on situations of loss and gain by Ingjerd Hoëm and on the Kilivila language of the Trobriands by the editor. Nick Thieberger, Peter Wittenburg and Paul Trilsbeek, and David Blundell and colleagues write about aspects of linguistic archiving. Under the rubric of revitalization, Margaret Florey and Michael Ewing write about Maluku, Jakelin Troy and Michael Walsh about Australian Aboriginal languages in southeastern Australia, whilst three articles, by Sophie Nock, Diane Johnson and Winifred Crombie concern the revitalization of Maori.

Written by leading second language acquisition theorists Explains the importance of sociocognition in relation to current second language acquisition (SLA) theories Describes the effectiveness of different forms of classroom feedback Covers the interpersonal aspects of language learning, and interaction in a variety of classroom and naturalistic settings Recommended reading for applied linguistics graduates, SLA researchers, language teachers and trainee teachers

This collection of original articles provides a state-of-the-art overview of key issues and approaches in contemporary language teaching. Written by internationally prominent researchers, educators, and emerging scholars, the chapters are grouped into five sections: rethinking our understanding of teaching, learner diversity and classroom learning, pedagogical approaches and practices, components of the curriculum, and media and materials. Each chapter covers key topics in teaching methodology such as reflective pedagogy, teaching large classes, outcomes-based language learning, speaking instruction, and technology in the classroom. Chapters assume no particular background knowledge and are written in an accessible style.

In The Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution, sixty leading scholars present critical accounts of every aspect of the field. Its five parts are devoted to insights from comparative animal behavior; the biology of language evolution (anatomy, genetics, and neurology); the prehistory of language (when and why did language evolve?); the development of a linguistic species; and language creation, transmission, and change.

Research on language evolution has burgeoned over the last three decades. Interdisciplinary activity has produced fundamental advances in the understanding of language evolution and in human and primate evolution more generally. The book presents a wide-ranging summation of work in all the disciplines involved. It highlights the links in different lines of research, shows what has been achieved to date, and considers the most promising directions for future work.

The Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution will be valued by everyone interested in one of the most productive and fascinating fields in natural and cognitive science.
Features
• A comprehensive survey of a dynamic multidisciplinary field offering clear, critical, comprehensible accounts on:
• comparative animal behavior
• the anatomy, genetics, and neurology of language evolution
• the development of language in human species
• the prehistory of language
• language creation, transmission, and change
 

But its dominance has so far lasted two centuries at most—far less than the spans of other major languages such as Greek, Latin, Arabic, or Sanskrit. And now, as historian and linguist Nicholas Ostler persuasively argues in his new book, English stands not only to be displaced as the world's language in the not-distant future, but also to be the last lingua franca, not replaced by another.
The primary causes for the spread of lingua francas over time have been empire (to bind peoples together politically), commerce (to facilitate trade), and religion (to reinforce the power of a faith), and Ostler explores each inspiration through the lens of civilizations, spanning the globe from China and India to Russia and Europe. Three trends emerge that suggest the ultimate decline of English, and lingua francas themselves. Throughout the world movements toward democratization in politics or equality in society will downgrade the status of elites. Since elites are the prime users of non-native English, the language will gradually retreat to its native-speaking territories. Moreover, the rising wealth of states like Brazil, Russia, India, and China will challenge and ultimately overtake the dominance of native-English-speaking nations—thereby shrinking the international preference for English. Simultaneously, new technologies will allow instant translation among major languages, enhancing the status of mother tongues and lessening the necessity for any future lingua franca.
Ostler predicts a soft landing for English: It will still be widely spoken, if no longer worldwide, sustained by America's continued power on the world stage. But its decline will be symbolic and significant, evidence of grand shifts in the cultural effects of empire. The Last Lingua Franca is both an insightful examination of the trajectory of our own mother tongue and a fascinating lens through which to view the sweep of history.
 

This book approaches the empirical validation of a popular method of assessing lexical knowledge - the yes/no vocabulary test or lexical decision task - from an interdisciplinary perspective. Each of its chapters sets out a distinct phase of the research along the development of a business English vocabulary test. The book offers a linguistic discussion of business English vocabulary, a psycholinguistic discussion of what aspects of linguistic knowledge and (meta)cognitive processing mechanisms are involved in completing the task, a psychometric-methodological discussion of how these aspects are measured and scored, and an applied discussion of the usefulness of the test. Thus, it is of interest to researchers, students, and professionals from a range of disciplines.
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La colección Escuela Inclusiva trata de la diversidad y de cómo afrontarla en la escuela y ha sido pensada para ayudar a los docentes que desean dar respuestas adecuadas a todo el alumnado desde un enfoque inclusivo. Así, este libro trata sobre la detección, evaluación, orientación e intervención educativa en relación con el alumnado que presenta dificultades en el aprendizaje de la lectura, sea en los momentos iniciales o a lo largo de su escolaridad. En este libro encontraréis propuestas, criterios, instrumentos, orientaciones y ejemplos para que todos los alumnos puedan aprender y participar en el aula junto a sus compañeros.
 

This volume presents the results of the international symposiumChunks in Corpus Linguistics and Cognitive Linguistics, held at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg to honour John Sinclair's contribution to the development of linguistics in the second half of the twentieth century.
The main theme of the book, highlighting important aspects of Sinclair's work, is the idiomatic character of language with a focus on chunks (in the sense of prefabricated items) as extended units of meaning. To pay tribute to Sinclair's enormous impact on research in this field, the volume contains two contributions which deal explicitly with his work, including material from unpublished manuscripts. Beyond that, the articles cover different aspects of chunks ranging from more theoretically-oriented to more applied papers, in which foreign language teaching and the computational application of the insights about the nature of language provided by corpus research play an important role.
The volume demonstrates the wide applicability and relevance of the notion of chunks by bringing together research from different fields of linguistics such as theoretical linguistics, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics and foreign language teaching, and thus provides an interdisciplinary view on the impact of idiomaticity in language.
 

• Leading scholars review their speciality in language acquisition
• Each chapter provides the reader with a strong introduction of the field and contains an overview of the work in the field by a leading authority
• Includes modern perspectives, reviews of crucial experiments, naturalistic data summaries, and methodological innovations that have led to new insights
Modern linguistic theory has been based on the promise of explaining how language acquisition can occur so rapidly with such subtlety, and with both surprising uniformity and diversity across languages. This handbook provides a summary and assessment of how far that promise has been fulfilled, exploring core concepts in acquisition theory, including notions of the initial state, parameters, triggering theory, the role of competition and frequency, and many others, across a variety of syntactic topics that have formed the central domains of investigation and debate. These topics are treated from the unique perspective of central actors in each domain who have helped shape the research agenda. The authors have presented a summary of the data, the theories under discussion, and their own best assessments of where each domain stands. Providing as well the agenda for future work in the field showing both particular needs and general directions that should be pursued in the coming decades.