This book provides a wide-ranging and in-depth theoretical perspective on dialogue in teaching. It explores the philosophy of dialogism as a social theory of language and explains its importance in teaching and learning. Departing from the more traditional teacher-led mode of teacher-student communication, the dialogic approach is more egalitarian…

Learning is a changing phenomenon, depending on the advances in theory and research. This book presents a relatively new approach to learning, based on meaningful human activities in cultural practices and in collaboration with others. It draws extensively from the ideas of Lev Vygotsky and his recent followers. The book presents ideas that…

A study of the discourse of Ga'dang, a Philippine language, focuses on normative discourse and persuasion, especially the ways in which the former is used to accomplish the latter. The first five chapters outline the theoretical framework of the study, placing normative and persuasive discourse in a philosophical context and relating them to the…

The collection of essays on discourse as a form of social interaction includes: "Discourse as Interaction in Society" (Teun A. van Dijk); "Discourse Pragmatics" (Shoshana Blum-Kulka); "Conversation Analysis: An Approach to the Study of Social Action as Sense Making Practices" (Anita Pomerantz, B. J. Fehr); "Institutional Dialogue" (Paul Drew,…

This book examines how culturally specific aspects of Japanese preschool children's narrative discourse skills develop and eventually lead to literacy. It discusses how language shapes and is shaped by culture-specific experiences, analyzing how young Japanese children develop narrative structure and how Japanese parents guide their children in…

This study investigated the hypothesis that in language contact situations, bilinguals develop strategies aimed at lightening the cognitive load of having to remember and use two different linguistic systems, resulting in changes in the secondary language. The study examined four specific strategies (simplification of grammatical categories and…

A collection of essays addresses the connection between the study of communication and its sociocultural contexts and the approach to second language teaching based on the concept of communicative competence. Essays include: "From Communicative Competence to Communicative Language Pedagogy" (Michael Canale); "The Domain of Pragmatics" (Bruce…

This text, designed to provide teachers and teacher-trainees with a comprehensive and up-to-date grasp of the theoretical foundations of foreign language teaching, is based on the assumption that a teacher-trainee needs to gain broad but systematic knowledge of the process of second language acquisition in order to understand and adapt teaching…

Papers on second language oral proficiency testing include: "Language Proficiency Interviews: A Discourse Approach" (Agnes Weiyun He, Richard Young); "Re-Analyzing the OPI: How Much Does It Look Like Natural Conversation?" (Marysia Johnson, Andrea Tyler); "Evaluating Learner Interactional Skills: Conversation at the Micro…