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The research in this unique collection lies at the interface between the fields of bilingualism and literacy. It deepens our understanding of the significance of reading and writing as social practices and opens up new lines of inquiry for research on multilingualism. The authors incorporate theoretical and methodological insights from both fields and provide detailed accounts of everyday practices of reading and writing in different multilingual settings. The focus is primarily on linguistic minority groups in Britain and on the language and literacy experiences of children and adults in rural and urban communities. Together, the chapters of the volume build up a rich and illuminating picture of specific ways in which literacy is bound up with cultural practices and with different ways of seeing the world. They also address fundamental questions about the relationship between language, literacy and power in multi-ethnic contexts.
The idea behind this book is that in complex societies like our own there are different worlds of literacy that exist side by side. People belong to different cultural groups: we lead different lives, we read and write different things in different ways and for different purposes. The idea that literacy is embedded in social context, that there are different literacies, is now accepted. This book presents a range of case studies describing some of these worlds of literacy and is carefully organised by theme, so as to bring out both the differences and connections between them. It will be a source book for students on courses of literacy studies. The case studies span the whole age range, but...
Nwenmely (community studies, U. of Reading) first attended then taught London classes in Kweyol, an Afro-French creole. She draws on her experience and other sources to describe the origins and development of classes there and in the eastern Caribbean. She also discusses the linguistic and social reasons people study the language, the written support such as dictionaries and grammars, the role of standardization, and questions of assessment and accreditation. No index. Distributed in the US by Taylor and Francis. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
The publication of Hugo Baetens Beardsmore’s book Bilingualism: Basic Principles by Multilingual Matters in 1982 coincided with an unprecedented upsurge of interest in bilingualism. A major reason for this was the acknowledgement that bilingualism is far more common than was previously thought, and perhaps even the norm. The number of bilinguals at the turn of the third millennium is probably greater than ever before and will continue to grow as a result of the combined forces of globalisation, automatisation, increased mobility and migration, and modernisation of foreign language teaching. The contributions in this book prove that, given the right conditions, bilingualism can confer disti...
The model presented in this volume draws together various strands of research - second language acquisition theory, bilingualism research, dynamic systems theory - to develop a novel approach to this challenging subject. Its main focus lies on the psycholinguistic dynamics of multilingualism, the processes of change in time affecting two or more language systems.
This text presents a Traveller's Guide to deaf culture, starting from the premise that deaf cultures have an important contribution to make to other academic disciplines, and human lives in general. Within and outside deaf communities, there is a need for an account of the new concept of deaf culture, which enables readers to assess its place alongside work on other minority cultures and multilingual discourses. The book aims to assess the concepts of culture, on their own terms and in their many guises and to apply these to deaf communities. The author illustrates the pitfalls which have been created for those communities by the medical concept of deafness and contrasts this with his new concept of deafhood, a process by which every deaf child, family and adult implicitly explains their existance in the world to themselves and each other.
Makes accessible to English speakers the current status of the development and distribution of the French language, the international movement for using it through nearly 50 countries and regions, and the cultural and political values it offers to the rest of the world. Outlines the development and distribution of Francophonie; problems of culture and identity, the last colonies, economics and organization; and prospects in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and Europe. For North Americans, places the otherwise sometimes perplexing concerns of Quebec into a historical and international perspective. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
This text contributes to the description of languages and communities - in particular those which have never been described - and up-dating the available data on the officially recognised languages of Spain.
Provides information and advice for teachers on multilingual issues, including teaching multilingual students and promoting the acquisition of multiple languages
This annual report from Her Majesty's Inspector of Prisons for England and Wales, covers the 2006-07 period. During this time the prison population increased to 81,500 prisoners, with over 1,000 a week being held in police cells, awaiting a prison place. The report also charts the effects on prisons and prisoners of an increasingly pressurised system. There were 40% more self-inflicted deaths in custody last year, particularly during a prisoners early days within the prison system, and particularly amongst groups of vulnerable prisoners, such as foreign nationals, indeterminate-sentenced and unsentenced prisoners and women. The effects of prison overcrowding place great strain on training pr...