The function of this book is to enhance the English proficiency of non-native speakers, while at the same time introducing them to some distinctive aspects of the American background. This approach serves the purpose of helping to adapt them both to the language and to the environment. This language material is designed so as to help students to apply what they have learned to their own speech and writing. In addition, turns-of-phrase and idioms as well as vocabulary are presented in such a manner as to alert students to connotations and to considerations of the situational appropriateness of a word, a pattern, or a particular expression.
The Language Imperative examines the power of language to shape our lives. It confronts some of the most pressing issues educators face today: Can learning languages actually change the way you think? Is it a good or bad idea to have command of more than one language? Should learning languages be a luxury for only the rich? Or should it be a goal of the public educational system as well? The Language Imperative is required reading for anyone interested in how words shape our lives, both as individuals and as a nation.
This book combines an introduction to speech-act theory as developed by J.L.Austin with a survey of critical essays that have adapted Austin's thought for literary analysis. Speech-act theory emphasizes the social reality created when speakers agree that their language is performative - Austin's term for utterances like: "we hereby declare" or "I promise", that produce rather than describe what they name. In contrast to formal linguistics, speech-act theory insists on language's active prominence in the organization of collective life.
The education of second language teachers takes place across diverse contexts, levels, settings, and geographic regions. By bringing together research, theory, and best practices from a variety of contexts (ESL/EFL, foreign language, bilingual and immersion education), this book contributes to building meaningful professional dialogue among second-language teacher educators.
The volume is comprised of 18 chapters organized in four thematic sections: the knowledge base of second language teacher education; second language teacher education contexts; collaborations in second language teacher education; and second language teacher education in practice.
The Linguistic Turn: Essays in Philosophical Method
For much of the 20th century, it was quite fashionable to believe that philosophical problems were all problems of language, and that if philosophers paid close enough attention to ordinary usage (or, alternately, devised an ideal language free of the muddles and inconsistencies of ordinary language), then philosophical problems would simply disappear. This was the linguistic turn
