Taking a psycholinguistic perspective, this book investigates how second language (L2) learners' pragmatic abilities in English can be measured. It complements and extends earlier work on the testing of implicit and explicit grammar. The authors present a set of tests they developed using both well-established methods of measuring pragmatic…

This book critically analyses early school foreign language teaching policy and practice, foregrounding the influence of the socioeducational and cultural context on how policies are implemented and assessing the factors which either promote or constrain their effectiveness. It focuses on four Asian contexts -- Malaysia, South Korea, Sri Lanka and…

This book examines the use of tasks in second language instruction in a variety of international contexts, and addresses the need for a better understanding of how tasks are used in teaching and program-level decision-making. The chapters consider the key issues, examples, benefits and challenges that teachers, program designers and researchers…

Over the past 40 years, Jim Cummins has proposed a number of highly influential theoretical concepts, including the threshold and interdependence hypotheses and the distinction between conversational fluency and academic language proficiency. In this book, he provides a personal account of how these ideas developed and he examines the credibility…

This book offers an evidence-based guide to EAL for everyone who works with multilingual learners. It provides a concise, helpful introduction to the latest research underpinning three key areas of EAL practice: (1) How children acquire additional languages? (2) How language works across the curriculum? and (3) How you can establish outstanding…

This book provides a rich and unique longitudinal account of content and language integrated learning (CLIL). The chapters report on the findings from a large-scale, three-year research project undertaken at senior high school level in Sweden. The ecological perspective, with quantitative and qualitative methods, gives voice to both learners and…

North American universities depend on international teaching assistants (ITAs) as a substantial part of the teaching labor force, which has led to the idea of an 'ITA problem', a deficiency model which is framed as a divergence between ITAs' linguistic competence and undergraduates' and their parents' expectations. This outdated positioning of…

This book provides a holistic overview of what leads to success in foreign language learning at an early age and deepens our understanding of early foreign language learning. The studies use an array of methodological approaches to research learners aged between three and ten, as well as their parents and teachers, in instructional, minimal-input…

In this monograph, Anatoliy V. Kharkhurin presents the results of his empirical investigation into the impact of multilingual practice on an individual's creative potential. Until now, the relationship between these two activities has received little attention in the academic community. The book makes an attempt to resuscitate this theme and…

A number of reports in the US have highlighted the country's need for improved second language skills for both national security and economic competitiveness. The Language Flagship program, launched in 2002, aims to raise expectations regarding language proficiency levels at the post-secondary level and to address structural gaps in the curricula…

Lexical errors are a determinant in gaining insight into vocabulary acquisition, vocabulary use and writing quality assessment. Lexical errors are very frequent in the written production of young EFL learners, but they decrease as learners gain proficiency. Misspellings are the most common category, but formal errors give way to semantic-based…

Drawing on data from a range of contexts, including classrooms, pharmacy consultations, tutoring sessions, and video-game playing, and a range of languages including English, German, French, Danish and Icelandic, the studies in this volume address challenges suggested by these questions: What kinds of interactional resources do L2 users draw on to…

In this accessible introduction to Vygotskyian sociocultural theory, narratives illuminate key concepts of the theory. These key concepts, addressed across seven chapters, include mediation; Zone of Proximal Development; collaborative dialogue; private speech; everyday and scientific concepts; the interrelatedness of cognition and emotion,…

Based on a series of studies from universities around the world, this book suggests that internationalization does not equate with across-the-board use of English, and instead represents a new cultural and linguistic hybridity with the potential to develop new identities unfettered by traditional "us-and-them" binary thinking, and which…

This volume builds on Fortune and Tedick's 2008 Pathways to Multilingualism: Evolving Perspectives on Immersion Education and showcases the practice and promise of immersion education through in-depth investigations of program design, implementation practices, and policies in one-way, two-way and indigenous programs. Contributors present new…