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The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) has become the yardstick for teaching and testing language skills in Europe and elsewhere. Yet little is known about the relationships between the communicative levels established using the can-do statements of the CEFR and the developmental stages of grammatical and lexical development described by Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research. This book presents empirical research by members of the SLATE network (Second Language Acquisition and Testing in Europe), aimed at bridging this gap. The studies deal with several target languages, including Dutch, English, Finnish, French, Italian, Norwegian and Spanish, with adult, adolescent and child learners in both formal and informal contexts.
Provides a detailed overview of the research exploring a wide range of ideas, theories, and practices around written text production. This book deals with issues around the development of basic ('low-level') writing skills, mainly in the early years of education. It also focuses directly on issues around the teaching and learning of writing.
Usage-based linguistics, which is currently very popular, bases its understanding of language on two key points: Languages are cognitive-social constructs (i.e., learned vs genetically endowed), and, in order for communication and meaning to happen, speakers must find a way to meet/understand each other, overcoming various differences (lexicon, social, register, etc.) to arrive there. In this book, high-level contributors combine research from various usage-based perspectives to explore these questions: How do proficient speakers accomplish 'mental contact' or communication through the available semiotic linguistic resources they share with other members of their discourse community? How do young children learn to accomplish this? And how do speakers of multiple languages learn to accomplish this across languages?
Finnish summary: Kartta ja köysi.
The complex linguistic situation of earlier multilingual Britain has led to numerous contact-induced changes in the history of English. However, bi- and multilingual texts, which are attested in a large variety of text types, are still an underresearched aspect of earlier linguistic contact. Such texts, which switch between Latin, English and French, have increasingly been recognized as instances of written code-switching and as highly relevant evidence for the linguistic strategies which medieval and early modern multilingual speakers used for different purposes. The contributions in this volume approach this phenomenon of mixed-language texts from the point of view of code-switching, an im...
This book is intended for researchers and students in the field of second language (L2) acquisition. As its title suggests, the book discusses L2 vocabulary acquisition, knowledge and use, and examines them from the perspectives of assessment and corpus analysis. The chapters also address some additional central research issues: the role of word frequency in the input, the difference between single words and multi-word units, and the distinction between vocabulary of oral and written language. The first three chapters of the book present critical reviews of different aspects of vocabulary acquisition. The other four chapters contain empirical studies that relate to the central themes of the book. The data in the studies draw on a variety of source and target languages: English, French, Italian, Swedish, Hebrew and Japanese. The book offers some new insights into the field of vocabulary and suggests avenues of research.
This book addresses the need for tests that can diagnose the strengths and weaknesses in learners' developing foreign language proficiency. It presents the rationale for, and research surrounding, the development of DIALANG, a suite of internet-delivered diagnostic foreign language tests funded by the European Commission. The word 'diagnosis' is common in discussions in language education and applied linguistics, but very few truly diagnostic tests exist. However, the diagnosis of foreign language proficiency is central to helping learners make progress. This volume explores the nature of diagnostic testing, emphasizing the need for a better understanding of the nature of appropriate diagnos...
This volume will appeal to anyone interested in knowing more about the fundamental building blocks of language: words. It brings together the fields of linguistics, neuroscience, psycholinguistics, speech-language pathology, and language education to present multifaceted perspectives on the topic of vocabulary. The theoretical and empirical contributions included consider some of the key questions facing the field, such as What is the mental lexicon? What constitutes a word? What are new and novel approaches to measuring and researching vocabulary? and What is the best way to teach vocabulary? This book will be useful to graduate students and scholars in the fields of theoretical linguistics, psycholinguistics, applied linguistics, adult and child language acquisition, and modern languages. In addition, it will appeal to language educators at various institutions, immigrant service specialists, school board officials, and study abroad consultants.