Thinking About Language

This photocopiable resource provides a clear structure to assist teachers, SENCOs, learning support assistants and speech language therapists in developing children's language from the concrete to the abstract. It is based on fifty picture and verbal scenarios that can be used flexibly with a wide range of ages and abilities. Quick, practical and easy to use in the classroom, this programme can be used with individual children, in small groups or can form the basis of a literacy lesson or speech language therapy session. Features: question sheets are carefully structured to promote children's development of inference, verbal reasoning and thinking skills; the three parallel assessments of spoken and written language can be used to assess each child's starting level and then to monitor progress; score forms and worksheets for each lesson are included. The book is particularly useful for children who are recognised as having delayed language skills, specific language impairment, Autism Spectrum Disorder (including Asperger's Syndrome), pragmatic language impairment or moderate learning difficulties. The 2nd Edition is now in full colour throughout and has been updated with a simplified introduction. All illustrations and worksheets will now be available online. Features: full colour throughout; new and revised illustrations; simplified introduction; online resources; illustrations and worksheets.

Originally published in 1875, this book discusses thinking and language and traces the development of different pscyological approaches, assessing their theoretical significance and the experimental evidence behind them. It ends by drawing together the various lines of argument to arrive at some general conclusions about language and thought, since it clearly emerges that the two are inextricably linked.

Thinking, Language, and Experience was first published in 1989.Hector-Neri Castañeda's intricate and provocative essays have been widely influential, especially his work in epistemology and ethics, and his theory on the relation of thought to action. The fourteen essays in Thinking, Language, and Experience -- half of them written expressly for this volume -- demonstrate the breadth and richness of his recent work on the unitary structure of human experience.A comprehensive, unified study of phenomena at the intersection between experience, thinking, language, and reality, this book focuses on singular reference -- that is, reference to individuals insofar as they are thought of as individuals: indicators, quasi-indicators, proper names, singular descriptions. Castañeda establishes a large number of new facts -- linguistic, semantic, psychological, and sociological -- about the workings of language in human experience, and from them develops a network of new theories, all grounded in his comprehensive Guise Theory.These theories offer a systematic account for: the structure of human experience and the world at large; the mental powers required to think of the world and to undergo experiences; self-consciousness; the language for thinking of other minds; perception and the interaction between indexical reference and perceptual fields; and the role of subjectivity in perception and intentional action.

While most children develop verbal reasoning skills with relative ease, others find it more challenging. Verbal reasoning is particularly difficult for children who are recognised as having delayed language skills, specific language impairment, Autistic Spectrum Disorder (including Asperger's Syndrome), pragmatic language impairment or moderate learning difficulties. Children with less obvious oral language difficulties may begin to struggle when they start to read. This photocopiable resource provides a clear structure to assist teachers, SENCOs, learning support assistants and speech language therapists in developing children's language from the concrete to the abstract. It is based on fifty picture and verbal scenarios that can be used flexibly with a wide range of ages and abilities. Quick, practical and easy to use in the classroom, this programme can be used with individual children, in small groups or can form the basis of a literacy lesson or speech language therapy session. Question sheets are carefully structured to promote children's development of inference, verbal reasoning and thinking skills. The three parallel assessments of spoken and written language can be used to assess each child's starting level and then to monitor progress; score forms and worksheets for each lesson are included.

This core textbook exposes students to the key theories, ideas and assumptions which underpin language study. Enlivened by a wealth of debates from across the field, it provides an accessible and engaging introduction to the history of linguistic theory and the variety of theoretical approaches to language study. Balancing theory with application, the first few chapters present an overview of the key issues in language theory, while later chapters focus on the application of language theory and serve as a starting point for readers to investigate various approaches for themselves. Written in response to the needs of teachers of English language undergraduates, this is an ideal volume for all students studying English language, whether as a single subject or as part of a more general degree programme.

This book clarifies the idea of critical thinking by investigating the 'critical' practices of academics across a range of disciplines. Drawing on key theorists - Wittgenstein, Geertz, Williams, Halliday - and using a 'textographic' approach, the book explores how the concept of critical thinking is understood by academics and also how it is constructed discursively in the texts and practices they employ in their teaching. Critical thinking is one of the most widely discussed concepts in debates on university learning. For many, the idea of teaching students to be critical thinkers characterizes more than anything else the overriding purpose of 'higher education'. But whilst there is general agreement about its importance as an educational ideal, there is surprisingly little agreement about what the concept means exactly. Also at issue is how and what students need to be taught in order to be properly critical in their field. This searching monograph seeks answers to these important questions.

Thinking about Language encourages students to begin thinking about ways of seeing language and introduces past debates and current disputes on the way that human language works. The second half of the book explores some of the specific questions addressed by theorists, and the implications of different types of linguistic theory for the answers they have suggested. Chapman offers a balance between theory and application and provides an interesting and accessible introduction to the history of linguistic theory, the variety of different theoretical approaches to language study, and to the current state of the subject.