This book presents the background to the current shift in language education towards action-oriented/action-based teaching, and provides a theorization of the Action-oriented Approach (AoA). It discusses the concepts and theories that paved the way for the AoA and explores their relevance for the way language education is conceived and implemented in the classroom. In the process, it revisits the concept of competence and discusses the dynamic notions of mediation and plurilingualism. The authors explain the way in which the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) and its recent update, the CEFR Companion Volume, broaden the scope of language education, in particular in relation to the actional turn. The book provides scholars and practitioners with a research-informed description of the AoA, explains its implications for curriculum planning, teaching and assessment, and elaborates on its pedagogical implications.

Interest in language play and linguistic creativity has increased in recent years, and the topic has been taken up from a variety of perspectives. In this book, disparate approaches to the topic are brought together, demonstrating that a number of phenomena whose similarities might not have been immediately recognized, have an academic home under the umbrella of language play and linguistic creativity. The contributions to this collection illustrate the variety of questions that can be asked regarding the social, cognitive, emotional, political, and cultural mechanisms and significance of innovative linguistic practices and point to new directions of inquiry. Furthermore, the work exemplifies a variety of ways in which this research can be carried out, as well as the range of contexts in which it might be investigated, including second language classrooms, online settings, and workplaces. Taken together, the chapters serve to illustrate the range of work that we will be accepting in the Language Play and Creativity series; viewed individually, each makes a unique contribution to some aspect of our understanding of creative language use.

An overview of current issues and developments in foreign language education, designed for instructors of language, literature, and culture at any stage of their careers A contemporary guide to language teaching, this book presents the latest developments and issues in the field of applied linguistics. Written by scholars with expertise in theoretical linguistics, literary and cultural studies, and education, the book encourages readers to examine their beliefs about language teaching and to compare these perspectives with the tenets of current research-supported frameworks and approaches. It also leads instructors to make vital connections between theory and practice while linking language and content pedagogy so that they may develop innovative lesson plans, classroom activities, and course materials that align with the specific contexts in which they teach. Serving as a textbook for teaching methods courses, as well as a reference for instructors with varying levels of experience and diverse specializations, the book is applicable to all levels of instruction and provides guidelines and models that prepare instructors to teach in a rapidly evolving field.

Each of the contributions in this volume expresses in some way the hope that it is possible to achieve an integrity of linguistics, understood as a science of man, in its psychological, sociological, pragmatic and cultural context. The first section focuses on the history of language study, the second section on the integrative description of facets of language, and the last section on the need for the study of language in context.

Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT) has been gaining momentum around the world during the past twenty years. However, particularly lacking in the body of available publications on TBLT is empirical evidence of the actual activity, interaction and learning processes that tasks give rise to in real classrooms. This volume compiles a number of studies that describe what learners and teachers, in various educational contexts, actually do when they are asked to perform tasks as part of their regular classroom activity. As such, the volume provides valuable new insights into the implementation of task-based language teaching and vividly illustrates how classroom practice can inform future theory-building and research on TBLT. All the chapters in this book are based on papers that were presented during the first International Conference on Task-Based Language Teaching, which was organised in Leuven in September 2005 by the Centre for Language and Education of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.

This volume represents a unique contribution to the area of language attitudes research with its focus on how languages, dialects and accents induce us to form social judgments about people who use these forms. The essays attend to evaluations of speech styles across nations. No previous work has embraced this comparative perspective globally, but such a volume that situates language and attitude research in the 21st century is long overdue. The content is culturally diverse and showcases the work of eminent scholars across the globe. Each chapter brings its own theoretical interpretation to this field of study, and the book provides the reader with a plethora of models that extend our understanding of language attitudes. It is fitting that Cindy Gallois, who has incisively contributed to research on language attitudes over the past 30 years, provides an epilogue on the current state of language attitudes research.

"Topics covered include speech act theory and indirect speech acts, politeness and the interpersonal determinants of language, language and impression management and person perception, conversational structure, perspective taking, and language and social thought."--Jacket