Bringing together an international and interdisciplinary team of contributors, this Handbook is a wide-ranging and invaluable reference guide to language teaching. A comprehensive reference work on language teaching, which combines the latest research findings, coverage of core topics, and examples of teaching experience from a variety of languages and settings Provides a unique breadth of coverage, including: the psycholinguistic underpinnings of language learning; social, political, and educational contexts; program design; materials writing and course design; teaching and testing; teacher education; and assessment and evaluation

In the Land of Invented Languages - Adventures in Linguistic Creativity, Madness, and Genius

Efforts to make language simpler, clearer, less divisive and more truthful have backfired spectacularly, to judge by this delightful tour of linguistic hubris. Linguist Okrent explores some of the themes and shortcomings of 900 years worth of artificial languages. She surveys philosophical languages that order all knowledge into self-evident systems that turn out to be bizarrely idiosyncratic; symbol languages of supposedly crystalline pictographs that are actually bafflingly opaque...

Syntactic Complexity - Diachrony, Acquisition, Neuro-Cognition, Evolution

Complex hierarchic syntax is considered one of the hallmarks of human language. The highest level of syntactic complexity, recursive-embedded clauses, has been singled out by some for a special status as the apex of the uniquely-human language faculty–evolutionary but somehow immune to adaptive selection. This volume, coming out of a symposium held at Rice University in March 2008, tackles syntactic complexity from multiple developmental perspectives. We take it for granted that grammar is an adaptive instrument of communication, assembled upon the pre-existing platform of pre-linguistic cognition.

Exploring Writing: Sentences and Paragraphs

Exploring Writing: Sentences and Paragraphs serves as a guidebook for every step of the writing process. Emphasizing both process and practice, with a focus on revision, the new second edition helps to apply and advance writing skills using John Langan’s proven techniques. Mastering essential sentence skills, learning to write effective sentences, paragraphs, and essays, and becoming a critical reader are turning points for every writer, and they will prepare the students for writing situations in college and beyond.

At last, a concise encyclopedia of NLP patterns! The Big Book Of NLP, Expanded, contains more than 350 techniques, patterns & strategies written in an easy, step-by-step format. The methods include a full array of the fundamentals that every practitioner needs, such as the Swish pattern and The Phobia Cure, as well as advanced and unique patterns, such as The Nested Loops method and Learning Strategies. Many of these techniques were never published before and cannot be found elsewhere. Perhaps more important, and unlike most other NLP books and programs, the patterns are written with great care and testing to ensure that they are clear and can be followed immediately.