A fantastic collection of problems for anyone who is curious about how human language works! These books take serious scientific questions and present them in a fun, accessible way. Readers exercise their logical thinking capabilities while learning about a wide range of human languages, linguistic phenomena, and computational models. This book brings together, for the first time in one collection, the best English-language problems created for students competing in the Computational Linguistics Olympiad.
In Babel No More, Michael Erard, “a monolingual with benefits,” sets out on a quest to meet language superlearners and make sense of their mental powers. On the way he uncovers the secrets of historical figures like the nineteenth-century Italian cardinal Joseph Mezzofanti, who was said to speak seventy-two languages, as well as those of living language-superlearners such as Alexander Arguelles, a modern-day polyglot who knows dozens of languages and shows Erard the tricks of the trade to give him a dark glimpse into the life of obsessive language acquisition.
The book constitutes a selection of 18 papers on foreign language pedagogy (11 papers) and translation studies (9 papers). The first part of the book is devoted to foreign language pedagogy. The articles in this part focus on issues such as English as lingua franca, foreign language teacher training, the role of individual learner differences in language learning and teaching especially with respect to strategies of language learning as well as psychological and socioaffective factors. The part focusing on translation studies comprises articles devoted to a variety of topics.
This book offers a general introduction to reaction time research as relevant to Second Language Studies and explores a collection of tasks and paradigms that are often used in such research. It provides a lucid explanation of the technical aspects of collecting reaction time data and outlines crucial research principles and concepts that will ensure accurate data. In addition, the book provides step-by-step instructions for using DMDX, a software program widely used for conducting reaction time research. This complete "why and how" guide for conducting reaction time research is ideal for both students/beginners and more seasoned researchers.
As a result of globalization, higher education institutions throughout the world are adopting English for parts of their education. Higher education is becoming increasingly international and thus linguistically diverse, for educational, idealistic and financial reasons. This book presents a much-needed description of English as a lingua franca (ELF) from an international university setting and focuses on form and pragmatic issues, using authentic spoken data. It provides useful insights into how communicative effectiveness can be achieved in spoken lingua franca communication.
