This volume is focused on the teaching and acquisition of language for special, professional or general purposes, as well as the needs and challenges associated with foreign language pedagogy in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) or, more generally, Language for Specific Purposes (LSP). It presents innovative methodology and technology-integrated approaches that will serve to benefit teacher development and assist language practitioners in enhancing student investment and motivation. A pragmatic tool for utilization at the local level, this collection provides an international panorama of language pedagogy that is of great use to both junior and senior researchers. It will also serve as a source of inspiration for future and seasoned language practitioners and in-service teacher educators.

Second language acquisition (SLA) is a field of inquiry that has increased in importance since the 1960s. Currently, researchers adopt multiple perspectives in the analysis of learner language, all of them providing different but complementary answers to the understanding of oral and written data produced by young and older learners in different settings. The main goal of this volume is to provide the reader with updated reviews of the major contemporary approaches to SLA, the research carried out within them and, wherever appropriate, the implications and/or applications for theory, research and pedagogy that might derive from the available empirical evidence. The book is intended for SLA researchers as well as for graduate (MA, Ph.D.) students in SLA research, applied linguistics and linguistics, as the different chapters will be a guide in their research within the approaches presented. The volume will also be of interest to professionals from other fields interested in the SLA process and the different explanations that have been put forward to account for it.

New Directions for Research in Foreign Language Education brings together contributions by reputed scholars that examine the challenges, opportunities, and benefits of teaching and learning foreign languages. With a particular focus on languages other than English, the book looks at the socio-political dimension of language learning and teaching and the need to re-theorize multilingualism for our age. The volume includes a range of perspectives, from language teaching as an act of reconciliation to language learning across the lifespan, from innovations in assessment and curriculum to critical appraisals of pedagogy and textbook materials. Each chapter presents a clear case study drawn from diverse contexts to illustrate the different concerns of the contributors. The book is a valuable resource for all students, teachers, teacher educators and researchers who share an interest in researching multilingualism and the different facets of teaching and learning foreign languages.

Learning environment research has undergone considerable growth in the past thirty years and has now reached a stage of notable diversity and internationalization. Earlier studies often used questionnaires to assess learning environments, but today both qualitative and quantitative approaches are used. Many contemporary studies are a productive combination of these two approaches.This volume brings together prominent educators and researchers from around the world to share their contemporary research on educational learning environments. The chapters provide information on recent trends and developments and effective applications of different methods to improve teaching and learning. The book will be a critical and specialized source that describes recent advances in learning environment studies across all continents. The contributors come from Australia, Belgium, Cyprus, Finland, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, Turkey, Taiwan, Thailand, and the USA.

It is well known that the number of non-English speakers is on the rise in the United States. What is less well known is that the largest proportion of this population is children under the age of 5. These young English language learners (ELLs) often demonstrate achievement gaps in basic math and reading skills when they start school. How best to educate this important and growing preschool population is a pressing concern for policymakers and practitioners. The chapters in this important book provide up-to-date syntheses of the research base for young ELLs on critical topics such as demographics, development of bilingualism, cognitive and neurological benefits of bilingualism, and family relationships, as well as classroom, assessment, and teacher-preparation practices. Contributors: Linda M. Espinosa, Margaret Freedson, Claudia Galindo, Fred Genesee, Donald J. Hernandez, José E. Náñez Sr., and Flora V. Rodríguez-Brown “This is a must-have for those who are working directly or indirectly with young English language learners.” —Olivia Saracho, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland

This book deals with the phenomenon of third language (L3) acquisition. As a research field, L3 acquisition is established as a branch of multilingualism that is concerned with how multilinguals learn additional languages and the role that their multilingual background plays in the process of language learning. The volume points out some current directions in this particular research area with a number of studies that reveal the complexity of multilingual language learning and its typical variation and dynamics. The eight studies gathered in the book represent a wide range of theoretical positions and offer empirical evidence from learners belonging to different age groups, and with varying levels of proficiency in the target language, as well as in other non-native languages belonging to the learner’s repertoire. Diverse linguistic phenomena and language combinations are viewed from a perspective where all previously acquired languages have a potential role to play in the process of learning a new language. In the six empirical studies, contexts of language learning in school or at university level constitute the main outlet for data collection. These studies involve several language backgrounds and language combinations and focus on various linguistic features. The specific target languages in the empirical studies are English, French and Italian. The volume also includes two theoretical chapters. The first one conceptualizes and describes the different types of multilingual language learning investigated in the volume: i) third or additional language learning by learners who are bilinguals from an early age, and ii) third or additional language learning by people who have previous experience of one or more non-native languages learned after the critical period. In particular, issues related to the roles played by age and proficiency in multilingual acquisition are discussed. The other theoretical chapter conceptualizes the grammatical category of aspect, reviewing previous studies on second and third language acquisition of aspect. Different models for L3 learning and their relevance and implications for representations of aspect and for potential differences in the processing of second and third language acquisition are also examined in this chapter. As a whole, the book presents current research into third or additional language learning by young learners or adults, considering some of the most important factors for the complex process of multilingual language learning: the age of onset of the additional language and that of previously acquired languages, social and affective factors, instruction, language proficiency and literacy, the typology of the background languages and the role they play in shaping syntax, lexicon, and other components of a L3. The idea for this book emanates from the symposium Multilingualism, language proficiency and age, organized by Camilla Bardel and Laura Sánchez at Stockholm University, Department of Language Education, in December 2016.