Challenges Of Second And Foreign Language Education In A Globalized World

This edited collection brings together papers by eminent scholars who attempt to demonstrate how challenges can most successfully be ameliorated with an eye to enhancing the effectiveness of the processes of language teaching and learning. In Part One, emphasis is placed on challenges that second language education has to face, both those more general, dealing with language policy issues, and those more specific, concerned with instructional options in the language classroom. Part Two focuses on challenges involved in researching the processes of teaching and learning in the second and foreign languages classroom, both with respect to research methodology and efforts to tap some variables impinging upon the effects of instruction. Finally, Part Three is devoted to challenges involved in second and foreign language teacher education, the quality of which to a large extent determines the outcomes of second language education in any educational context.

This book considers the issues globalization raises for second language learning and teaching. Block and Cameron's collection shows how, in an economy based on services and information, the linguistic skills of workers becomes increasingly important. New technologies make possible new kinds of language teaching, and language becomes an economic commodity with a value in the global marketplace. This has implications for how and why people learn languages, and for which languages they learn. Drawing together the various strands of the globalization debate, this rich and varied collection of contributions explores issues such as: *The commodification of language(s) and language skills *The use of new media and new technologies in language learning and teaching *The effects of globalization on the language teaching industry *New forms of power and resistance.

The challenges posed by globalization for languages, policies and education form the basis of this collection of selected doubly-blind peer-reviewed articles, which have been put together following the 2014 PLIDAM conference on “Policies and Ideologies in Language Teaching: Actors and discourses”. The chapters collected in this volume revolve around the topic of globalization, which we understand to be a blend of ideas covered by at least four meanings: (1) internationalization, in reference to the growing interdependence and transactions between countries; (2) liberalization, which has to do with the forming of an ‘open’ and ‘borderless’ world economy; (3) universalization of certain phenomena around the world; and (4) westernization, with an emphasis on the influence of Western values (gender equality, freedom of speech and other ideas inspired by the West) over the rest of the world. The four broad themes that the chapters are organised into are (I) Policies in Language Teaching and Learning; (II) Language Policy, Ideology and Minority Languages; (III) Language Teaching and Learning across Cultures; (IV) Language Teaching and Learning with Technology. Contributing to the knowledge, discussion and debate about the impact that globalization has had on languages, policies and education in a wide variety of contexts, we hope that this book will be useful and informative to language researchers, policy makers and anyone with an interest in the intersecting field between languages, policies and education.

This book, by an international group of scholars, focuses on a number of sociolinguistic issues, some of them complex and controversial, linked to language education in the age of globalisation. It examines these in different contexts of immigration and super-diversity, in the light of new mobilities and new conceptualisations of changing social realities and language communities. The various investigations presented in the volume are often united and interconnected in their approaches to these key areas of focus, although each peer-edited chapter brings its own relevance to the work as a whole, and each reflects the complexities and practices of the particular contexts and speech communities examined. The insights presented provide a useful way of looking at the current state of the art of language education across the different levels of schooling and also within the various contexts analysed. Because of the increasing interest in language education as a result of both the growing number of migrant children in schools and the globalisation associated with the rapid spread of English, the volume will be of interest to a wide international readership, including scholars and students of sociolinguistics and language education.

Addressing a wide range of issues in applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, and multilingualism, this volume focuses on language users, the ‘people.’ Making creative connections between existing scholarship in language policy and contemporary theory and research in other social sciences, authors from around the world offer new critical perspectives for analyzing language phenomena and language theories, suggesting new meeting points among language users and language policy makers, norms, and traditions in diverse cultural, geographical, and historical contexts. Identifying and expanding on previously neglected aspects of language studies, the book is inspired by the work of Elana Shohamy, whose critical view and innovative work on a broad spectrum of key topics in applied linguistics has influenced many scholars in the field to think “out of the box” and to reconsider some basic commonly held understandings, specifically with regard to the impact of language and languaging on individual language users rather than on the masses.

This edited book focuses on the state of language learning in Anglophone countries and brings together international research from a wide range of educational settings. Taking a contextual perspective on the language learning crisis currently facing Anglophone countries, the authors examine systemic challenges, real-world practices, and broader cultural trends that have an impact on the uptake of modern foreign languages in different Anglophone settings. This book will be of interest to scholars working in applied linguistics and language education, particularly those with a focus on educational policy and Global English.

In light of increasing globalization, this collection makes the case for global citizenship education as a way forward for transforming foreign language learning and teaching to better address current and future global challenges in times of unprecedented change. The volume maps a multi-dimensional approach within foreign language pedagogy to take up the challenge of "educating the global citizen". Drawing on sociocultural, pedagogical, cosmopolitan, digital and civic-minded perspectives, the book explores the challenges in constructing epistemological frameworks in increasingly global environments, the need for developing context-sensitive educational practices, the potential of linking up with work from related disciplines, and the impact of these considerations on different educational settings. The collection reflects an international range of voices, attuned to global and local nuances, to offer a holistic compilation of conceptual innovations to showcase the relevance of global citizenship issues in foreign language education and encourage future research. This book will be of interest to scholars in intercultural education, foreign language education, and language teaching, as well as policymakers and foreign language teachers. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.

This book addresses the various challenges facing university foreign language teaching in non-anglophone countries in the era of educational globalization. Growing student mobility, net-based cross-border university education, and universities opening subsidiaries in other countries force university teachers to offer their teaching in English rather than in their mother tongue, and universities to equip their staff members with the necessary foreign language competencies. As a reflection of societal and institutional globalization processes, dedicated language teachers strive to adjust teaching methods to new student identities, the availability of advanced learning technologies, and social media enabling multiple forms of cross-border contact. Thus, understanding the situation of contemporary university language teaching requires a consideration of macro-level social changes, institutional policies, as well as developments in classroom practice. The point of departure is the case of Denmark. The problems addressed and the remedies offered, however, apply to all non-anglophone universities with the ambition to stay competitive in the global market of university education. The book includes contributions from foreign and second language teaching specialists representing a broad spectrum of Danish universities and years of sustained scholarly effort to improve the standard of university language teaching and the political recognition of the importance of advanced foreign language skills.