Trends in Applied Linguistics [TAL]

Despite policies promoting multilingualism, monolingual methods dominate Hungarian education. Drawing from theory and research on multilingual approaches to language teaching in the European context, this volume explores the effectiveness of multilingual awareness-raising in learning German after English in the Hungarian secondary school context. A year-long intervention comparing students’ linguistic development and motivation shows that building on prior language knowledge and raising multilingual awareness significantly enhances third language acquisition and boosts student motivation, thus representing a compelling case for integrating multilingual strategies in language teaching.

Model texts are exemplary native-language texts that serve as guides for shaping language abilities. This book explores the profound impact of sustained exposure to model texts on the cultivation of children's writing skills. Bridging existing research gaps, it delves into the efficacy of written corrective feedback and model texts in language learning. Additionally, it investigates form-focused intervention alongside motivational and perceptual factors. The findings underscore the transformative influence of integrating model texts into English as a foreign language classrooms. As such, it is a perfect read for educators looking for practical tips on language development.　

Literacy is a prerequisite for participation in many areas of life in modern societies. Yet, many adult migrants have had no, or only limited, opportunity to become literate in any language. They therefore face the added challenge of becoming literate at the same time as they are learning a new language. This book brings together research by authors from different regions of the world who have studied the acquisition processes of adult migrants learning to read and write in a new language. The collection includes ethnographic investigations of everyday language and literacy practices, classroom studies on the effectiveness of teaching practices, and research on high-stakes testing and formative multilingual assessment methods.

This book brings together multilingualism, tense and aspect, and Romance language education. The chapters present theoretical and empirical research on the teaching and learning of French, Spanish, Italian, and Catalan in different educational contexts with data collected in Europe, the Americas, and Asia from learners with various linguistic backgrounds. With its clearly delineated sections on learning, teaching, and sociolinguistic variation, the volume makes an important contribution to the rich field of inquiry of second and third languages that is of significance to researchers, teachers, and learners alike.

Affectivity is essential in language learning and new ways of studying it must be considered. In this volume, the authors bring together two particularly relevant aspects of affectivity that are rarely related: the prosody of speech as the physical manifestation of affectivity, and affectivity involved in the learning process, with a strong component of (inter)culture and identity. In sum, overly narrow perspectives on affective language can only be avoided if we continue to bring together scientific and didactic studies of affectivity as a broad and diverse whole.

　

How can assessment shed light on learners’ current abilities and help chart a path for their continued development? Dynamic assessment and diagnostic language assessment are both now well established in the second language (L2) field, and while they emerge from different theoretical traditions, they share a commitment to pursuing this question. The chapters in this volume showcase innovative work in both approaches undertaken by leading scholars around the world. Each chapter also offers insight into the complementary nature of the approaches, ultimately raising the possibility of how they might together form a powerful new assessment framework.

This volume explores how grammatical categories, as defined by theoretical linguistics, are effectively implemented in language education. Aiming to bridge the gap between linguistic research and language pedagogy, it offers a detailed inquiry that spans theoretical frameworks and empirical data. By presenting a series of insightful studies, this work illustrates how findings from theoretical linguistics can be applied to enhance practical language instruction, demonstrating the reciprocal enrichment of both fields.

Essential for linguists, language educators, and researchers interested in the intersections of grammar, cognition, and pedagogy, the volume is organized into four engaging sections. Each section illuminates the nuances of grammar teaching and language acquisition. It begins with a theoretical analysis of linguistic categories across diverse languages, progresses through the links between linguistic research and teaching methodologies, and delves into the role of empirical data in classroom applications. The final section focuses on the practical implementation of linguistic categories in language teaching, promoting a deeper understanding of grammar as a dynamic component of language learning.

The present book explores how modern board gaming and language teaching can be beneficially combined to achieve optimal impact. Modern board games have a lot to offer language learners and teachers, and they should play a much more significant role in what has been labelled "Content and Language Integrated Learning" or CLIL.

Modern board games require cooperation, problem-solving, active discovery, interpretation and analysis. Most importantly, modern board games allow students to explore a hypothetical environment without the risk of language errors. The key ingredient of the present book is "game-based learning and teaching theory", or GBLTT, a theoretical framework which measures learning outcomes based on gaming and learning procedures. GBLTT is focused on balancing information and gameplay as well as putting a focus on the ability of each learner to retain language competence and to put their subject to realistic situations.

Higher education institutions (HEIs) are increasingly affected by globalization and internationalization, with implications for language use, teaching and learning in their academic communities. As a consequence, HEIs may change their approach to multilingualism on campus, taking into account language needs as well as opportunities and challenges associated with language diversity. The book aims at discussing aspects for the design of language policies, which could support internationalization and promote multilingualism and participation of different stakeholders. By presenting a language policy model, the book provides an alternative for those engaged in language diversity in HEIs.

Researchers in applied linguistics have found medical and health contexts to be fertile grounds for study, from macro-levels of conceptual analyses to micro-levels of the "turn-by-turn." The rich array of health contexts include medical research itself, clinical encounters, medical education and training, caregivers and patients in everyday life – from the formal and ritualized to the ad hoc and ephemeral.

This volume foregrounds the crucial role of applied linguists addressing real world problems, while simultaneously highlighting the varied ways that health can be understood as a rich site of language inquiry in its own right. Chapters cover a range of health topics including medical training, medical interaction, disability in education, health policy analysis and recommendations, multidisciplinary research teams, and medical ethics. While reporting and reflecting on their specific topics in clinical and health contexts, contributors also articulate their own hybrid identities as professional collaborators in health research, education, and policy.

Multilingualism has become an increasingly common global phenomenon especially in the last two decades. Therefore, multilingual programmes have now been regarded as a cornerstone of education systems in many countries around the world. Learning multiple languages helps us plug into a globalised world and strengthen links with a multitude of speakers from a diversified reality we live in. Thanks to the researched cases described in the chapters, further developments aimed at fostering multilingual practices in the contemporary world will be enhanced. The chapters included in the present volume, provide an overview of current theory, research and practice in the field. They deal with such prominent research topics as multilingual education, language policies, language contact, identity of multilingual speakers, to name only a few. The selected chapters focus on the numerous and heterogeneous relations between languages. They also incorporate a series of contextualized studies with diverse research designs applied in different settings across the globe. This volume constitutes a pivotal reference source for the latest scholarly material on multilingualism from twelve different countries. It is a thought-provoking collection that provides a series of rich insights into the way multilingualism is practised in international contexts. It is ideally designed for academics, upper-level students, educators, professionals and practitioners seeking linguistic and pedagogical guidance on multilingualism.

Informed by theory, research, and classroom practice, the volume provides a systematic overview of critical L2 writing issues. Additionally, with the aim to support instruction across all levels of education for Chinese speakers, this book introduces pre-service and in-service teachers to new teaching ideas, techniques, and practice.

The notion of the native speaker and its undertones of ultimate language competence, language ownership and social status has been problematized by various researchers, arguing that the ensuing monolingual norms and assumptions are flawed or inequitable in a global super-diverse world. However, such norms are still ubiquitous in educational, institutional and social settings, in political structures and in research paradigms. This collection offers voices from various contexts and corners of the world and further challenges the native speaker construct adopting poststructuralist and postcolonial perspectives. It includes conceptual, methodological, educational and practice-oriented contributions. Topics span language minorities, intercomprehension, plurilingualism and pluriculturalism, translanguaging, teacher education, new speakers, language background profiling, heritage languages, and learner identity, among others. Collectively, the authors paint the portrait of the "changing face of the native speaker" while also strengthening a new global agenda in multilingualism and social justice. These diverse and interconnected contributions are meant to inspire researchers, university students, educators, policy makers and beyond.

Since the introduction of communicative language teaching, collaborative learning has played an important role in the second language (L2) classroom. Drawing from sociocultural theory, which states that human cognitive development is a socially situated activity mediated by language, studies in L2 pedagogy advocate the use of tasks that require learners to work together. Collaborative dialogue encourages language learning, and research shows that the solutions reached by students in this process are more often correct with a lasting influence on their language comprehension.

This volume includes ten chapters that illustrate the benefits of collaborative dialogue in second foreign language classrooms. The volume considers key issues dealing with collaborative tasks and implications for language teaching.

Virtual exchanges provide language learners with a unique opportunity to develop their target language skills, support inter-cultural exchange, and afford teacher candidates space to hone their teaching craft. The research presented in this volume investigates the role of virtual exchanges as both a teaching tool to support second language acquisition and a space for second language development. Practitioners obtain guidance on the different types of exchanges that currently exist and on the outcome of those exchanges so that they can make informed decisions on whether to include this type of program in their language teaching and learning classrooms. To this end, this edited volume contains chapters that describe individual virtual exchanges along with results of research done on each exchange to show how the exchange supported specific second language teaching and learning goals.

Nearly half a century has passed since Hymes proposed the concept of communicative competence to describe the knowledge and skills required for the appropriate use of language in a social context. During these decades, a number of scholars have applied and refined this concept. In language education, communicative competence has been identified as a major objective of learning.

This book will inform readers about communicative competence as a highly complex construct encompassing an array of sub-competencies such as linguistic skills and proficiencies, knowledge of socio-cultural and socio-pragmatic codes, and the ability to engage in textual and conversational discourse. Findings from research in related disciplines have pointed to the significance of factors that can contribute to the attainment of communicative competence. Various teaching practices and relevant Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools will be also introduced and discussed to achieve communicative competence as a complex ability. It is a timely contribution to current research on key areas in the teaching, learning and acquisition of second/foreign languages.

The last three decades have witnessed a growth of interest in research on tasks from various perspectives and numerous books and collections of articles have been published focusing on the notion of task and its utility in different contexts. Nevertheless, what is lacking is a multi-faceted examination of tasks from different important perspectives. This edited volume, with four sections of three chapters each, views tasks and Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT) from four distinct (but complementary) vantage points. In the first section, all chapters view tasks from a cognitive-interactionist angle with each addressing one key facet of either cognition or interaction (or both) in different contexts (CALL and EFL/ESL). Section two hinges on the idea that language teaching and learning is perhaps best conceptualized, understood, and investigated within a complexity theory framework which accounts for the dynamicity and interrelatedness of the variables involved. Viewing TBLT from a sociocultural lens is what connects the chapters included in the third section. Finally, the fourth section views TBLT from pedagogical and curricular vantage points.

Despite being highly debated in applied linguistics and L2 teaching literature, the controversial issue of (non)nativeness still remains unresolved. Contemporary critical research has questioned the theoretical foundations of the nativeness paradigm, which still exerts a strong influence in the language teaching profession.
Written by well-known researchers and teacher educators from all over the world, both NSs and NNSs, the selected contributions of this volume cover a great variety of aspects related to the professional role and status of both NS and NNS teachers in terms of both perceived differences and professional concerns and challenges. The strongest aspects of this volume are the global perspectives and the implications for future research and teacher education. It is precisely this international perspective which makes this volume illustrative of different realities with a similar objective in mind: the improvement of second language teaching and teacher education. In today's world, being a NS or NNS should not really matter but rather teachers' professional competences.
This publication thus provides a forum of reflection and discussion for all L2 educators who need to be aware of how much they might offer to their future students.

This book introduces a new topic to applied linguistics: the significance of the TESOL teacher’s background as a learner and user of additional languages. The development of the global TESOL profession as a largely English-only enterprise has led to the accepted view that, as long as the teacher has English proficiency, then her or his other languages are irrelevant.

The book questions this view. Learners are in the process of becoming plurilingual, and this book argues that they are best served by a teacher who has experience of plurilingualism.

The book proposes a new way of looking at teacher linguistic identity by examining in detail the rich language biographies of teachers: of growing up with two or more languages; of learning languages through schooling or as an adult, of migrating to another linguaculture, of living in a plurilingual family and many more.

The book examines the history of language-in-education policy which has led to the development of the TESOL profession in Australia and elsewhere as a monolingual enterprise. It shows that teachers’ language backgrounds have been ignored in teacher selection, teacher training and ongoing professional development. The author draws on literature in teacher cognition, bilingualism studies, intercultural competence, bilingual lifewriting and linguistic identity to argue that languages play a key part in the development of teachers’ professional beliefs, identity, language awareness and language learning awareness.

Drawing on three studies involving 115 teachers from Australia and seven other countries, the author demonstrates conclusively that large numbers of teachers do have plurilingual experiences; that these experiences are ignored in the profession, but that they have powerful effects on the formation of beliefs about language learning and teaching which underpin good practice. Those teachers who identify as monolingual almost invariably have some language learning experience, but it was low-level, short-lived and unsuccessful.

How does the experience of successful or unsuccessful language learning and language use affect one’s identity, beliefs and practice as an English language teacher? What kinds of experience are most beneficial?

These concepts and findings have implications for teacher language education, teacher professional development and the current calls for increased plurilingual practices in the TESOL classroom.

In the past 15 years, English as a lingua franca (ELF) has evolved from a ‘niche topic’ of a relatively small group of specialists to a highly productive research area that now has a firm place on the map of linguistics. Looking back (as well as forward), this edited volume addresses perspectives and prospects of ELF in connection with other areas of linguistics. It is the first volume that brings together ELF scholars with experts from a wide range of areas in linguistics (such as corpus linguistics, sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, language pedagogy, language policy, intercultural communication). Adopting an inter-/transdisciplinary approach, the book traces the impact that discussions about ELF have had – or may have – beyond the study of ELF as such: for the conceptualization, description, methodology, pedagogy and politics of ‘English’. As the book combines external perspectives on ELF, provided by well-known scholars in diverse fields, with a smaller number of internal perspectives provided by prominent ELF scholars, it will be of interest not only to students and researchers interested in ELF, but also to students and scholars in Applied Linguistics, Sociolinguistics and Intercultural Communication.

This volume presents research that lies at the intersection of healthcare communication, global migration, and the rapidly expanding technologies used for language testing. Readers will find engagement with the interdisciplinary studies, given that effective communication - and its assessment - lies at the very core of quality healthcare delivery.

This collection combines research from the field of (im)politeness studies with research on language pedagogy and language learning. It aims to engender a useful dialogue between (im)politeness theorists, language teachers, and SLA researchers, and also to broaden the enquiry to naturalistic contexts other than L2 acquisition classrooms, by formulating 'teaching' and 'learning' as processes of socialization, cultural transmission, and adaptation.

This book is the first longitudinal study that addresses language policy and planning in the context of a major international sporting event and examines the ideological, political, social, cultural, and economic effects of such context-specific policy initiatives on contemporary China. The book has important reference value for future research on language management at the supernational level and language services for linguistically complex events. At the same time, it presents some broader implications for current and future language policy makers, language educators and learners, particularly from non-English speaking backgrounds.

Foreword by Ingrid Piller

Language education at all levels benefits from research in a multitude of ways. Conversely, educational practices and experiences offer fertile ground for research into language learning, teaching and assessment. This book views research in language education as a reciprocal venture that should benefit all participants equally. Practice is shaped by theory, which in turn is illuminated and refined by practice. The book brings together studies from different fields of language education in nine countries on four continents: Cameroon, Canada, Finland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan and Sweden. The authors report on research that depends on the active involvement of teachers, teacher educators and learners of different ages and various backgrounds. The book focuses on projects designed to address challenges in the classroom and on the role of learners as collaborative agents in the research process as well as collaborative research in professional development and the role of collaborative research in the development of national policy.

This book presents comprehensive, thorough and updated analyses of key cognitive individual difference factors (e.g., age, intelligence, language aptitude, working memory, metacognition, learning strategies, and anxiety) as they relate to the acquisition, processing, assessment, and pedagogy of second or foreign languages. Critical reviews and in-depth research syntheses of these pivotal cognitive learner factors are put into historical and broader contexts, drawing upon the multiple authors' extensive research experience, penetrating insights and unique perspectives spanning applied linguistics, teacher training, educational psychology, and cognitive science. The carefully crafted chapters provide essential course readings and valuable references for seasoned researchers and aspiring postgraduate students in the broad fields of instructed second language acquisition, foreign language training, teacher education, language pedagogy, educational psychology, and cognitive development.　

Only 15 years ago bilingualism was somewhat outside the main debates in cognitive linguistics. Cognitive linguistics had, to a large extent, taken for granted the fact that language is embodied in our experience. However, not much attention was given to questions of whether any changes to our language repertoire alter the way we perceive the world around us. A growing body of recent research suggests that one cannot understand the cognitive foundations of language without looking at bi- and multilingual speakers. In this vein, the present book aims to contribute to the existing debate of the relationship between language, culture and cognition by assessing differences and similarities between monolingual and bilingual language acquisition and use. In particular, it investigates the effect of conceptual-semantic and pragmatic properties of constructions on code choice and code switching, as well as the impact of bilingual and bicultural education on speakers’ cognitive development. This collective volume systematises, reviews, and promotes a range of theoretical perspectives and research techniques that currently inform work across the disciplines of bilingualism and code switching.

This collection of scholarly articles is the first to address the challenges of multilingualism from a multidisciplinary perspective. The contributors to this volume examine both the beneficial and the problematic aspects of multilingualism in various dimensions, that is, they address familial, educational, academic, artistic, scientific, historical, professional, and geopolitical challenges.

This book contributes to current theory building within applied linguistics and sociolinguistics by looking at the role of language in the lives, realities, and understandings of real children and youth in an urban setting. Collectively the studies amount to a comprehensive account of how urban children and youth construct, reactivate, negotiate, contest, and navigate between different linguistic and sociocultural norms and resources.

This book explores how academics at conferences co-construct their own and each other’s professional identities. It is based on the detailed sequential analysis of audio recordings of conference discussions in the field of the humanities, the working languages being French and English.

The analyses show that the delegates who actively participate in these interactions, whether as presenters, chairpersons or as members of the audience, carry out a considerable amount of identity work, attributing self and other to various categories of professional identity. The discussion participants co-construct themselves and each other discursively as academics, professionals, experts, junior or senior members of the scientific community; they also orient to this identity work as an important task to be achieved at conferences.

This study provides detailed insights into the fine-grained mechanics of spoken academic discourse. From the perspective of applied research it serves the double purpose of raising experienced researchers’ awareness of their own routines and introducing novices to the discourse practices of academia.

This book contributes to current issues in TLA and multilingualism research. It discusses multilingual learning and development from a Dynamic Systems Theory perspective. The author argues that trilingual education does not harm or confuse young learners but that the teaching of three languages from an early age carries positive implications for children's linguistic, metalinguistic, and crosslinguistic awareness.

This book deals with early multilingual acquisition from a holistic, dynamic, and multilingual perspective. It focuses on the analysis of pragmatic awareness and language attitudes of consecutive multilingual children in relation to other variables, such as the linguistic model or the age factor. This volume makes an important contribution to the field, providing evidence for the Dynamic Model of Multilingualism proposed by Herdina and Jessner.

Multimodality is a fast-growing interdisciplinary approach that aims to analyze the interplay of multiple modes such as gaze, gesture or spoken language that are utilized in interaction, and to examine the multimodal production and consumption of communicated messages.
This Reader provides a comprehensive text of current research into multimodality, outlining in-depth delineation of each primary theoretical and methodological approach, as well as personal accounts of scholars, who are responsible for the various approaches’ advancements. The book additionally offers a plethora of analysis chapters, written by scholars from across the world, with vastly diverse themes ranging from buying popcorn, protests in Oman, coaching sessions and identity, to kitesurfing, typography, TV news, billboards, workplace practices, or analyzing web pages, Facebook, comic books, and more.
Flexible and easy to use, the Reader includes key terms, suggested further readings, and a project idea for each chapter. The key terms for the chapters also comprise the extensive alphabetical glossary. Brief introductions for the analysis chapters, written by the editors, summarize the topic, explain the methodology used, outline the thematic orientation, and link each chapter to other chapters in the book.
Showcasing multimodal analysis in detail, this Reader is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students, for emergent researchers, and for advanced scholars who wish to gain insight into the current state of multimodal research.

This volume offers a definitive source for understanding social influences in L2 pronunciation, demonstrating the importance of empirical findings from a number of research perspectives, and outlining the directions that future work can take. The aim is to present a coherent argument for the significance of social factors and how they contribute to phonological acquisition.

The book aims to address one of the main problems of Chinese language teaching: lack of research base. The rapidly growing interest in Chinese language teaching has not resulted in the development of a strong research background. This book attempts to change the current situation.

The volume consists of three chapters. Chapter I: Research Base for Practice contains three papers, each of which uses research findings as a basis for solving issues connected with practical language teaching. Chapter II: Integrating Culture and Language is about one of the most intriguing topics of current language-oriented research: how to integrate culture into the process of language teaching. Chapter III: Acquisition of Language Structures consists of studies that investigate the acquisition of certain grammatical structures in Chinese. There are only a few papers in the literature on this issue, so the articles in this chapter are especially important for further research.

One of the most important features of the volume is that each paper makes an attempt to bring together theory and practice by focusing on theory-building based on practice or theory application in practice. Thus the book can be recommended to both researchers and practitioners.

This book comprehensively analyzes the development of interculturally blended third spaces by the second language learner, beginning with the linguistic and sociocultural imprints of the first language and culture on the mind and culminating in the proposal of a phase-model of the development of intercultural competence. The foundational analysis of L1-mediated constructs is followed by an analysis of forms interaction, concepts of identity and constructs of culture/interculture, thus shifting the object of analysis from the subjective to the intersubjective levels of construction and interaction. The focus of the book is on the gradual development of interculturally blended third spaces in the mind of the learner as genuinely new bases for construction. This book takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on research in cultural psychology, linguistic anthropology, critical theory, language acquisition and second language learning and shows how culture and interculture need to be emphasized as an integral part of second language learning.

The book is an empirical study of naturally occurring talk between psychotherapist and clients experiencing various anxieties and traumas that most of us recognize and can relate to. By relying on contemporary theories about sequential, situated discourse as well as drawing on “praxis” literature, it aims to investigate how psychotherapy as practice is contextually and interactionally accomplished. By scrutinizing patterns of language use, which reflect the core norms of the speech event of psychotherapy, it offers a unique look into the therapeutic dialogue at the micro level. The book presents a host of practical guidelines as to how to conduct ethnographic fieldwork at the (inter)professional research site in order to produce practically relevant findings. It also addresses the infiltration of therapeutic norms and strategies into new social contexts. Talk as Therapy is about disclosing one’s (usually) dysphoric experiences, clarifying and exploring them in the interactional here-and-now as well as focusing on their emotional aspects in the safety of the relationship with the therapist.

The aim of this pioneering volume is to advance our understanding of written language learning in instructed SLA by offering a collection of empirical studies in which the contribution of diverse theoretical perspectives to our understanding of L2 writing development will be explored. As such, the book represents a further attempt to situate written language learning at the core of applied linguistics research, in general, and SLA research, in particular, hence attempting to redress the oral bias of theoretical and empirical work in these fields. It adds a further building block onto recent TESOL initiatives aimed at understanding "development" in second and foreign language learning. Continuity from one chapter to another is provided by adherence to a consistent chapter model. The volume will be of great interest to academics in the disciplines of second/foreign language acquisition (SLA) and second/foreign language (L2) writing.

The acquisition of Mandarin Chinese, one of the most important and widely spoken languages in the world today, is the focus of this innovative study. It describes the rise of Chinese as a global language and the many challenges and opportunities associated with learning it. The collaborative, multiple-case study and cross-case analysis is presented from three distinct but complementary theoretical and analytic perspectives: linguistic, sociocultural, and narrative. The book reveals fascinating dimensions of Chinese language learning based on vivid first-person accounts (with autobiographical narratives included in the book) of adults negotiating not only their own and others' language and literacy learning, but also their identities, communities, and trajectories as users of Chinese.

In this monograph, the author offers a new way of examining the much discussed notion of identity through the theoretical and methodological approach called multimodal interaction analysis. Moving beyond a traditional discourse analysis focus on spoken language, this book expands our understanding of identity construction by looking both at language and its intersection with such paralinguistic features as gesture, as well as how we use space in interaction. The author illustrates this new approach through an extended ethnographic study of two women living in Germany. Examples of their everyday interactions elucidate how multimodal interaction analysis can be used to extend our understanding of how identity is produced and negotiated in context from a more holistic point of view.

This book is the very first collection of first-person language learning narratives that offers rich introspective data on the various processes and forces shaping the development and maintenance of multiple languages (seven and more) in a single individual. The writers are twelve multilinguals who have been influenced by quite different contextual factors and who have learned a wide range and combination of dialects and languages from both similar and very different linguistic families. The combinations explored in the narratives include some lesser-known languages that come from under-researched areas, such as the African continent, certain parts of Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe.

Also unique are two theoretical chapters which analyze the narrative data against the background of language development research findings within several thematic areas: multiple language learning as a complex dynamic system; the influence of bilingualism/multilingualism on the acquisition of additional languages; cross-linguistic influence; and also emotions, motivation, and identity. The aim of this juxtaposition and analysis is to allow a meaningful comparison of the extent to which etic, researcher-generated, and emic, learner-offered perspectives match or diverge, and to identify new questions that the emic data may add to research agendas. The book is an excellent resource not only for researchers but also for teachers as well as for students of language at the graduate and undergraduate level.

With English-medium higher education burgeoning in Europe and elsewhere outside the English-speaking world, this book is the first to offer an ethnographically-embedded analysis of such classroom discourse by taking cognizance of English functioning as a lingua franca (ELF) in international student groups. By virtue of investigating one such educational programme in its entirety, the study also enlarges the present knowledge on ELF discourse as it offers novel insights into the interactional dynamics that shape and develop an educational community of practice.

This comprehensive project has the objective of describing and assessing pronunciation talent with special focus on its psychological and neural correlates. The first part of this undertaking describes the extensive tests necessary to measure phonetic talent in its various dimensions, such as production and perception, the segmental and suprasegmental levels of speech, and different utterance forms such as spontaneous speech, reading and imitation. Subjects are examined in their native language (German), a familiar second language (English) and, to a lesser degree, an unfamiliar language (Hindi). The project also investigates psychological and behavioral influences such as empathy or motivation on pronunciation performance, as well as correlations with general linguistic aptitude. The described measures and correlations allow a reliable classification of proficiency and talent level to be used in the selection of subjects for the neuroimaging studies in the second part of the project. These use functional magnetic resonance imaging in order to observe differences in brain activity between talented and untalented individuals during the performance of phonetic tasks (perception of phonetic differences, imitation, reading).