Controversies In Applied Linguistics

There are several issues in English teaching on which applied linguists take very different positions: e.g. linguistic imperialism, the validity of critical discourse analysis, the pedagogic relevance of corpus descriptions of language, the theoretical bases of second language acquisition research, the nature of applied linguistics itself. This book presents exchanges between scholars arguing different positions, and directs attention to the key points at issue.

Controversies in Second Language Writing is not a how-to book, but one that focuses on how teachers in L2 writing can be helped to make reasoned decisions by understanding some of the key issues and conflicting opinions about L2 writing research and pedagogy. This book will assist teachers in making informed decisions about teaching writing in the ESL classroom. To counteract some of the debates, Casanave explores the different sides of the arguments and provides examples of how other teachers have dealt with these issues. The book presents novice and seasoned teachers with thought-provoking issues and questions to consider when determining and reflecting on their own teaching strategies and criteria. Topics discussed include: contrastive rhetoric product vs. process fluency and accuracy assessment of student work audience plagiarism politics and ideology.

This volume focuses on 'practice' from a theoretical perspective and includes implications for the classroom.

This book provides a wide-ranging treatment of the major issues in applied linguistics.

This book presents a constitutive approach to controversy based on a discourse analysis of news texts, focusing on the role of journalists as participants who shape public controversy for readers. Drawing data from the Reuters Corpus, the project identifies formulas that journalists use in reporting controversy and draws conclusions about how these serve professional and textual functions and how they shape public controversy as a natural, historical, and pragmatic event. While the traditions of dialectic and rhetoric have focused on the prescriptive aim of training participants to resolve controversies in philosophical dialogue or public debate settings, this orientation has tended to preempt questions about where controversy is located and how it is shaped. This project contributes to descriptive, ethnographic research about controversy, using discourse analysis to address a problem in argumentation.

Rethinking Languages Education assembles innovative research from experts in the fields of sociocultural theory, applied linguistics and education. The contributors interrogate innovative and recent thinking and broach controversies about the theoretical and practical considerations that underpin the implementation of effective Languages pedagogy in twenty-first-century classrooms. Crucially, Rethinking Languages Education explores established understandings about language, culture and education to provide a more comprehensive and flexible understanding of Languages education that responds to local classrooms impacted by global and transnational change, and the politics of language, culture and identity. Rethinking Languages Education focuses on questions about ways that we can develop farsighted and successful Languages education for diverse students in globalised contexts. The response to these questions is multi-layered, and takes into account the complex interactions between policy, curriculum and practice, as well as their contention and implementation. In doing so, this book addresses and integrates innovative perspectives of contemporary theory and pedagogy for Languages, TESOL and EAL/D education. It includes diverse discussions around practice, and addresses issues of the dominance of prestige Languages programs for ‘minority’ and ‘heritage’ languages, as well as discussing controversies about the current provision of English and Languages programs around the world.

The Wug Test is a picture book for children and adults that uses invented nouns, verbs, and adjectives to illuminate what children know about their own language. This book includes the original delightful Wug Test drawings and test questions created by Professor Jean Berko Gleason in 1958. The Wug Test, first given in research settings, showed that children do not learn language simply by memorizing what they hear. Instead, they learn the rules of their language so that they are able to make plurals, past tenses and other forms when presented with words they have never heard before. This book has pictures and interesting questions to share with children, along with informative notes and commentary for adults. It provides a fascinating insight into what even very young children know about language, as well as a way to understand and observe a child's acquisition of the rules of language over time. Ages 3-7.

The book is a collection of 10 papers on theoretical and applied linguistics, and is divided into two sections. Part I, devoted to Theoretical Linguistics, addresses a range of issues pertaining to phonology, morphophonology, morphology, cognitive semantics, syntax and lexicology, and consists of six chapters. Part II, Applied Linguistics, comprises four chapters, which investigate the intricacies of language acquisition, psycholinguistics and pragmatics, discourse analysis, and translation studies. The languages analysed include Polish, English, French, Spanish, Russian, Middle English, Middle French, Anglo-Norman and Bangor Welsh. Some of the phenomena analysed in the volume are the properties of Bangor Welsh diphthongs in the light of the Lateral Theory of Phonology, Polish palatalization within Element Theory, lexical convergence in Psalters, bilingual acquisition, impoliteness in talk-show political discourse, and translation and localisation of video games, among others.