The Christian movement emerged amidst complex social tensions, power politics, ethnic diversity, economic stress, and cultural changes. Both biblical scholars and social scientists find that a social scientific study of early Christian phenomena yields fascinating results. However, biblical scholars are sometimes unaware of the breadth of the useful social scientific concepts and techniques, and social scientists sometimes lack the most basic background in literary research methods. The

Considers the role of fertiliser use in agriculture as a major contributor to the imbalance of the global nitrogen cycleReviews the effectiveness of inorganic nitrogen fertilisers and organic sources of nitrogen in optimising nitrogen use efficiencyHighlights recent developments in the use of enhanced efficiency nitrogen fertilisers to reduce nitrous oxide emissions

The culmination of more than a decade of research, this compelling volume offers a fresh approach for applying functional linguistics to assess student performance, to inform the teaching and learning of Chinese and to design curriculum and teaching materials. Documenting authentic systemic functional linguistics (SFL) studies in researching and teaching Chinese as a first or second language, this research is set in the multilingual settings of Hong Kong and Australia. The experiences of S...

In 1910 Protestant missionaries from around the world gathered to explore the role of Christian missions in the twentieth century. In this collection, leading missiologists use the one hundred year anniversary of the Edinburgh conference as an occasion to reflect on the practice of Christian mission in today's context: a context marked by globalization, migration, ecological crisis, and religiously motivated violence. The contributors explore the meaning of Christian mission, the contempor...

Whether we grow up with one, two, or several languages during our early years of life, many of us will learn a second, foreign, or heritage language in later years. The field of Second language acquisition (SLA, for short) investigates the human capacity to learn additional languages in late childhood, adolescence, or adulthood, after the first language --in the case of monolinguals-- or languages --in the case of bilinguals-- have already been acquired. Understanding Second Language A...

This book is a guide for parents who wish to raise children with more than one language and literacy. Drawing on interdisciplinary research, as well as the experiences of parents of multilingual children, this book walks parents through the multilingual reading and writing process from infancy to adolescence. It identifies essential literacy skills at each developmental stage and proposes effective strategies that facilitate multiliteracy, in particular, heritage-language literacy developm...

This book applies social theory to curriculum design and sets out a program for language curriculum renewal for the 21st century. It includes many examples of text-based curricula and describes a plan for curriculum renewal based on texts as the unit of analysis for planning, for teaching and for assessment. Underpinned by Halliday’s semiotic theory of language, the book combines the theory of language as a resource for meaning-making with learning language as learning to mean. The curricu...

'… A beautifully written, articulate and compelling argument for a sociocultural perspective on second language teacher education . . . Essential reading for all who wish to understand this perspective.' – David Nunan, University of Hong Kong'…Significant and timely. Johnson is masterful at writing in an engaging, transparent prose about complex concepts. It’s a rare scholar who can write prose like this. Throughout my reading I wanted to engage in...

The aim of the book is to explain a range of options for implementing the reflective practice cycle in educational settings in various international contexts. It presents a series of empirical case studies illustrating many different ways of implementing the reflective practice cycle, and how they can be researched by practitioners and academics. Increasing attention is given by teachers and teacher educators to the construct and implementation of reflective practice as a form of bottom-up...

This book presents a thought-provoking challenge to mainstream theories of second language learning. Focusing on Chinese Hanzi, a self-sufficient meaning-making system that operates via visual shape and the logic built into its formation, it analyses ‘post-lingual’ pedagogy. The author examines this ‘language beyond language’ or linguistic theories, demonstrating that Hanzi is not made up simply of arbitrary signs but is the result of a complete conceptualisation process. In doing so, she ...

This book is available Open Access.This book introduces readers to the concept of task-based language teaching (TBLT), a learner-centred and experiential approach to language teaching and learning. Based on the premise that language learners can enhance their second language acquisition (SLA) through engagement in communicative tasks that compel them to use language for themselves, TBLT stands in contrast to more traditional approaches. Accessible and comprehensive...

How Chinese Teach Mathematics and Improve Teaching builds upon existing studies to examine mathematics classroom instruction in China. It combines contributions from Chinese scholars with commentary from key Western scholars to offer multiple perspectives in viewing and learning about some important and distinctive features of mathematics classroom instruction. Viewing classroom instruction as part of teachers’ instructional practices, this book goes beyond teachers’ in-classroom ...