Trade schools, universities, and programs for international students have begun to experiment with Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) as a viable pedagogy for instruction, as the pedagogy of CLIL increasingly gains recognition as a practical form of language and content education in Europe and beyond, and its application in instructional settings becomes more diverse. Corresponding with CLIL’s growth, this book focuses on foreign language use during peer interactions in a new ...

In this book I try to give a coherent and consistent overview of what an ecological approach to language learning might look like. This is not a fully fledged grand theory that aims to provide an explanation of everything, but an attempt to provide a rationale for taking an ecological world view and applying it to language education, which I regard as one of the most important of all human activities. Goethe once said that everything has been thought of before, but that the difficulty is t...

This volume explores the elusive subject of English prosody—the stress, rhythm and intonation of the language—, and its relevance for English language teaching. Its sharp focus will be especially welcomed by teachers of English to non-native speakers, but also by scholars and researchers interested in Applied Linguistics. The book examines key issues in the development of prosody and delves into the role of intonation in the construction of meaning. The contributions tackle difficult areas...

Study abroad is now both an international industry and an experience that can have a deep impact on students' attitudes and approaches to second language learning. Narratives of Second Language Identity in Study Abroad brings together three important research areas by exploring the impact of study abroad on second language identities through narrative research. It outlines a new model of second language identity that incorporates a range of language and personal competencies. The three mai...

This book is a comparative study of vague language based on naturally occurring data of L1 and L2 speakers in academic settings. It explores how L2 learners have diverse and culturally specific needs for vague language compared with L1s, and are generally vaguer.

These in-depth case studies provide novel insights in to the fast-changing language situation in multilingual China, and how it changes the meanings of language identity and language learning. This linguistic ethnographic study of language attitudes and identities in contemporary China in the era of multilingualism provides a comprehensive and critical review of the state of the art in the field of language-attitude research, and situates attitudes towards Chinese regional dialects in thei...

This book explores the influence of high stakes standardised testing within the context of South Korea. South Korea is regarded as a shining example of success in educational achievement and, as this book reveals, pressurised standardised testing has been a major contributing factor to its success. This unique country provides an excellent setting from which to explore the powerful relationship that exists between testing and learning and can advance our understanding of which factors and ...

This book analyses the learning experiences of students of Business English at a Chinese university. It addresses several topical issues in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) education and Business English teaching, including how ESP students learn, how they develop multiple identities. In particular, it focuses on their professional identity in the classroom, and how these identities are transferred to the workplace. This allows the author to present a model of learning Business English ...

This book presents research on the instruction of two heritage languages and two foreign languages in Israeli schools. The authors explore language policy and the way languages are studied from the point of view of students, teachers, schools and curricula. Language in Israel is a loaded concept, closely linked to ideological, political, and social issues. The profound changes in language policy in the West along with two large waves of immigration from the Former Soviet Union and Ethiopia...

This book explores the responses of Chinese English teachers (CETs) and learners to the Native English-Speaking Teacher/Non-Native English-Speaking Teacher (NEST/NNEST) issue by examining the self-perceptions of Chinese English teachers, the perceptions of Chinese learners, and the real practices of the two groups of teachers in the classroom. It reveals how Chinese students’ and teachers’ perceptions are influenced by the combined forces of Chinese traditional culture and globalization, h...

This book is about complexity-driven, trandsisciplinary approach to language study. It illustrates how complexity science can be applied in the research of language and society in order to create and sustain a transdisciplinary dialogue across interested communities of practice which may be beneficial in improving living conditions of real people.

Provides a step-by-step approach to the most useful statistical analyses for language test developers and researchers using IBM SPSS, Winsteps and Facets. It contains clearly-worked out examples for each analysis with detailed explanations.