This book celebrates one of the lights of the field of child language, Melissa Bowerman, with contributions from leading experts who have been directly influenced by her work. It provides the most up-to-date statement of key positions and theorizing regarding fundamental questions in the field of child language development.

This volume provides a state-of-the-art treatment of research on language attrition, the non-pathological loss of a language through lack of exposure. It combines a review of past and present research with in-depth treatments of specific theoretical and methodological issues and reports on individual studies. Special prominence is given to the identification of problematic areas in attrition research, with a view to pointing out possible solutions.

The selected contributions of this volume focus on various issues related to second language pedagogy and second language acquisition in the Japanese context. Part I covers such topics as discourse pragmatics and cross-cultural pragmatics in language teaching; the instruction of conversation through training in story telling skills; task activities as a means for grammarization in grammar teaching; the development of a computerized speaking test and a proficiency scale for EFL learners; and the social aspects of the language teacher expertise.

This dynamic book examines how literacy learning can be expanded and redefined using the medium of spoken word poetry. The author tells the story of a passionate Language Arts teacher and his work with The Power Writers, an after-school writing community of Latino and African American students. Featuring rich portraits of literacy in action, this book introduces teaching practices for fostering peer support, generating new vocabulary, discussing issues of Standard American English, and using personal experiences as literary inspiration.

The present volume is the fifth in the series ‘Trends in Language Acquisition Research’ (TiLAR). As an official publication of the International Association for the Study of Child Language (IASCL), the TiLAR Series publishes two volumes per three year period in between IASCL congresses. All volumes in the IASCL-TiLARSeries are invited edited volumes by IASCL members that are strongly thematic in nature and that present cutting edge work which is likely to stimulate further research to the fullest extent.