For undergraduate or graduate level foreign language methods courses in Teacher Preparation. Also appropriate for junior high and high school teachers of modern foreign languages.Exclusive in its socio-cultural approach to language learning, this comprehensive text builds on the National Communication Standards for foreign language learning. Its goal is to equip students with the necessary knowledge and skills to establish and maintain effective classroom communities of foreign language learners. To accomplish this, the author incorporates the latest research and theoretical insight regarding communication and communicative development with practical application. The result is a complete, effective approach to designing curriculum, instruction, and assessment for foreign languages.

Modern language classrooms are currently dominated by the communicative method of language teaching. This reader draws together recent and newly commissioned papers to show the origins of communicative methodology, how it has developed, what its research justification is and how it can most effectively be used in the classroom. Various chapters examine the particular challenges of differentiation, teaching grammar, encouraging pupils to use the target language together and teaching a foreign language to children with special educational needs. The final section discusses ways of developing creativity in the modern languages classroom through the use of drama, creative writing and role play. Anyone involved in teaching modern languages will find this reader a rich source for reflection and good practice.

This book provides a practical overview of the most important methods in the field. Readers are drawn into classrooms where various teaching methods and approaches are being used. They are encouraged to reflect on their own beliefs and to develop their own approach to language teaching. - Publisher.

Language teaching approaches, methods and procedures are constantly undergoing reassessment. New ideas keep emerging as the growing complexity of the means of communication and the opportunities created by technology put language skills to new uses. In addition, the political, social and economic impact of globalisation, the new demands of the labour market that result from it, the pursuit of competitiveness, the challenges of intercultural communication and the diversification of culture have opened new perspectives on the central role that foreign languages have come to play in the development of contemporary societies. This book provides an insight into the latest developments in the field and discusses the new trends in foreign language teaching in four major areas, namely methods and approaches, teacher training, innovation in the classroom, and evaluation and assessment.

This volume explores how the traditional academic disciplines of linguistics, translation, literature and cultural studies can contribute to, or be integrated into, the teaching of a foreign language by means of innovative methodologies, techniques and instruments. The book begins with a selection of essays on applied linguistics that share some significant findings in the context of second or foreign language acquisition. It then examines the ways in which linguistics, translation theory, literature and cultural studies are brought into the foreign language classroom not just as objects of study but also as vehicles for language-learning. By presenting studies on four main foreign languages, English, Spanish, French and German, the collection offers, to the foreign language profession, an opportunity for the sharing and comparison of strategies across languages at both the secondary and higher education level. The text is a valuable resource for language teachers with a more philologically-oriented background who would like to learn how to apply their research knowledge and experience to the design and implementation of new methodological approaches.

Selections from writings by European and American educators from the Renaissance to the twentieth century.