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This book is essential for anyone concerned with language or linguistic minorities in education. It provides a thorough and clear explanation of the background to, and issues surrounding, language diversity in British education. It will be of interest both to the expert and those seeking an introduction to the field. The study reviews and re-evaluates surveys of language diversity in British education in the context of 'action research'. The author argues that the process of surveying activity is at least as important as the data reported. Evidence for this argument is provided through original research undertaken among students and teachers in Further Education. The study includes ethnographic research into teachers' attitudes and responses to language surveys. The author offers a useful new model for surveys investigating language diversity among students or school children.
This book presents a comprehensive, but practical, overview of the different phases and activities involved in the development and implementation of effective survey projects by language-teaching professionals. The text, which includes chapters on planning, designing, gathering, analyzing, and reporting survey research, would be accessible to graduate students, language teachers, administrators, and researchers. The theoretical and practical issues involved in survey design are defined and discussed in digestible chunks. All concepts are explained in an easy-to-follow, step-by-step manner, with ample examples and checklists provided. Each chapter also includes a list of key terms, a set of review questions, and a collection of exercises for practical application. In this text, language-teaching professionals will find all of the crucial information needed to survey students and teachers about their beliefs and practices. The results can then be used for developing curriculum, evaluating the success of language programs, or doing other relevant research.
Shows how to conduct sociolinguistic surveys on a small scale without access to funding sometimes available to national language planners. Prepares to train people with little background in social research methodology. Spells out how those primarily concerned with local languages can learn to make informed decisions about language choice at local levels. Provides invaluable background on bilingualism and language use and attitudes. Shows how bilingualism develops and is maintained in different situations. Describes several methods for testing dialect comprehensibility in considerable detail, and gives advantages and disadvantages of each. It combines academic sophistication with realism and is a major contribution for conducting sociolinguistic surveys in general.
This book offers a systematic analysis of a wide range of questions used in censuses, national surveys and international surveys to measure language proficiency. It addresses the urgent need in language related survey research for a comprehensive examination of the large existing body of survey data in order to provide a fuller understanding of the extent to which survey results are shaped by the way language proficiency questions are worded. While census and survey language proficiency data are extensively used in a wide range of research areas, as well as in forming, implementing and monitoring government policies, there are as yet no universally accepted survey measures of language proficiency. This book will therefore provide a valuable resource for students and scholars working in sociological areas that use census or survey language data, such as sociology of language, sociology of education, politics, racial and ethnic studies, and cultural studies; as well as for policy analysts.
This work, first published in 1994, provides a framework which covers the major aspects of contemporary standard Korean and allows cross-language comparisons. It offers a wide-ranging and comprehensive grammatical description of Korean, covering syntax, morphology, phonology, ideophone/interjections and lexicon.
Germanic - one of the largest sub-groups of the Indo-European language family - comprises 37 languages with an estimated 470 million speakers worldwide. This book presents a comparative linguistic survey of the full range of Germanic languages, both ancient and modern, including major world languages such as English and German (West Germanic), the Scandinavian (North Germanic) languages, and the extinct East Germanic languages. Unlike previous studies, it does not take a chronological or a language-by-language approach, organized instead around linguistic constructions and subsystems. Considering dialects alongside standard varieties, it provides a detailed account of topics such as case, word formation, sound systems, vowel length, syllable structure, the noun phrase, the verb phrase, the expression of tense and mood, and the syntax of the clause. Authoritative and comprehensive, this much-needed survey will be welcomed by scholars and students of the Germanic languages, as well as linguists across the many branches of the field.
The Slavic group of languages - the fourth largest Indo-European sub-group - is one of the major language families of the modern world. With 297 million speakers, Slavic comprises 13 languages split into three groups: South Slavic, which includes Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian; East Slavic, which includes Russian and Ukrainian; and West Slavic, which includes Polish, Czech and Slovak. This 2006 book, written by two leading scholars in Slavic linguistics, presents a survey of all aspects of the linguistic structure of the Slavic languages, considering in particular those languages that enjoy official status. As well as covering the central issues of phonology, morphology, syntax, word-formation, lexicology and typology, the authors discuss Slavic dialects, sociolinguistic issues, and the socio-historical evolution of the Slavic languages. Accessibly written and comprehensive in its coverage, this book will be welcomed by scholars and students of Slavic languages, as well as linguists across the many branches of the discipline.
Collecting, Managing, and Assessing Data Using Sample Surveys provides a thorough, step-by-step guide to the design and implementation of surveys. Beginning with a primer on basic statistics, the first half of the book takes readers on a comprehensive tour through the basics of survey design. Topics covered include the ethics of surveys, the design of survey procedures, the design of the survey instrument, how to write questions and how to draw representative samples. Having shown readers how to design surveys, the second half of the book discusses a number of issues surrounding their implementation, including repetitive surveys, the economics of surveys, web-based surveys, coding and data entry, data expansion and weighting, the issue of non-response, and the documenting and archiving of survey data. The book is an excellent introduction to the use of surveys for graduate students as well as a useful reference work for scholars and professionals.
A comprehensive source of ideas and advice for enhancing the learning of all students in all subject areas and at all grade levels.
China, with the world's largest population, numerous ethnic groups and vast geographical space, is also rich in languages. Since 2006, China's State Language Commission has been publishing annual reports on what is called "language life" in China. These reports cover language policy and planning invitatives at the national, provincial and local levels, new trends in language use in a variety of social domains, and major events concerning languages in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Now for the first time, these reports are available in English for anyone interested in Chinese languge and linguistics, China's language, education and social policies, as well as everyday language use among the ordinary people in China. The invaluable data contained in these reports provide an essential reference to researchers, professionals, policy makers, and China watchers.