Language Exploration And Awareness

"Language Exploration and Awareness: A Resource Book for Teachers, Third Edition" shows English teachers how they can expand their curriculum beyond the traditional emphases on grammar and syntax, to help their students learn about many aspects of the English language, including general semantics, regional and social dialects, syntax, spelling, history of the English language, social language conventions, lexicography, and word origins. Clear, practical, and reader-friendly, the text reviews basic aspects of English language study in classrooms, then illustrates how teachers can create student-centered, inquiry-oriented activities for the learners in their classrooms. Written from a sociocultural perspective, this text stresses the uses of authentic language as it is used by real people for real purposes in diverse social contexts. Changes in the Third Edition are: all chapters have been thoroughly updated to address new developments in the world and in the field of English and language arts education; the chapters in Section II include new Student Explorations - activities designed by pre- and in-service teachers that readers can use with students in their classrooms; and new in this edition are references throughout several chapters to Web sites that instructors and students will find useful. This text is intended as text for undergraduate and master's level English language arts courses on the pedagogies of language teaching, and as an introduction to language or introduction to linguistics courses - particularly those emphasizing language study from a sociocultural perspective; and for courses preparing teachers of English as a new language. The text is also intended as a resource for current classroom teachers.

"Encourages language teachers to expand their horizons beyond the teaching of grammatical form and function. Emphasizing a sociocultureal view, it presents a range of topics, semantics, dialects, syntax, language history, social discource conventions based upon a perspective that combines psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics."--Page [4] of cover.

This book helps language teachers to explore and become more aware of their own teaching beliefs, attitudes, and practices. It provides them with knowledge and guidelines that can empower them to make informed teaching decisions. Teacher educators will also find the text a practical book to use in preservice and inservice programs, courses, and workshops. The text discusses and illustrates activities teachers can use to gain awareness of teaching, including observation, action research, keeping journals, exploring with a supervisor, and connecting their personal and professional lives. It then gives examples of teachers who have used such activities to take a careful look at their own teaching practices. Tasks throughout the book give teachers experiential knowledge of the activities and ideas that characterize an exploratory approach to teaching awareness, which expands upon the usual training and development models of teacher education.

The papers included in the volume look at how language awareness affects the outcomes of foreign and second language acquisition in advanced learners. The book focuses on questions such as how much linguistic knowledge is open to the learner’s conscious experience, what should and should not be considered the knowledge of language, how language awareness can be enhanced in the classroom, and, most crucially, what effects language awareness has on attained proficiency. Some papers in the volume also address methodological challenges of researching language awareness, such as the difficulty of defining and measuring awareness with sufficient precision.

The Routledge Encyclopedia of Language Teaching and Learning is an authoritative handbook dealing with all aspects of this increasingly important field of study. It has been produced specifically for language teaching professionals, but can also be used as a reference work for academic studies at postgraduate level. It offers a comprehensive range of articles on contemporary language teaching and its history. Themes covered include: methods and materials assessment and testing contexts and concepts influential figures related disciplines, such as psychology, anthropology and sociolinguistics. It covers the teaching of languages, in particular Japanese, Chinese and Arabic, as well as English, French, German and Spanish. There are thirty-five overview articles dealing with issues such as communicative language teaching, early language learning, teacher education and syllabus and curriculum design. A further 160 entries focus on topics such as bilingualism, language laboratories and study abroad. Numerous shorter items look at language and cultural institutions, professional associations and acronyms. Multiple cross-references enable the user to browse from one entry to another, and there are suggestions for further reading. Written by an international team of specialists, the Routledge Encyclopedia of Language Teaching and Learning is an invaluable resource and reference manual for anyone with a professional or academic interest in the subject.

English teachers, readings and applications. Reading literature, teaching writing, teaching about language. Joining the profession.

Language in the Schools: Integrating Linguistic Knowledge Into K-12 Teaching addresses two important questions: *What aspects of linguistic knowledge are most useful for teachers to know? *What kinds of activities and projects are most effective in introducing those aspects of linguistic knowledge to K-12 students? The volume focuses on how basic linguistic knowledge can inform teachers' approaches to language issues in the multicultural, linguistically diverse classroom. The text also includes examples of practical applications of language awareness to pedagogy, assessment, and curriculum construction, which support the current goals of language arts, bilingual, and ESL education. Language in the Schools: Integrating Linguistic Knowledge Into K-12 Teaching contributes to the resources on linguistics and education by taking prospective teachers beyond basic linguistics to ways in which linguistics can productively inform their teaching and raise their students' awareness of language. It is intended as a text for students in teacher education programs who have a basic knowledge of linguistics.