This accessible book is written by teachers of modern languages and tackles the specifics of the discipline while situating it within the literature on teaching Modern Languages in Higher Education.

Here is an informative introduction to language: its origins in the past, its growth through history, and its present use for communication between peoples. It is at the same time a history of language, a guide to foreign tongues, and a method for learning them. It shows, through basic vocabularies, family resemblances of languages -- Teutonic, Romance, Greek -- helpful tricks of translation, key combinations of roots and phonetic patterns. It presents by common-sense methods the most helpful approach to the mastery of many languages; it condenses vocabulary to a minimum of essential words; it simplifies grammar in an entirely new way; and it teaches a language as it is actually used in everyday life.

This book presents research on the learning of foreign languages by children aged 6-12 years old in primary school settings. The collection provides a significant and important contribution to this often overlooked domain and aims to provide research-based evidence that might help to inform and develop pedagogical practice. Topics covered in the chapters include the influence of learner characteristics on word retrieval; explicit second language learning and language awareness; meaning construction; narrative oral development; conversational interaction and how it relates to individual variables; first language use; feedback on written production; intercultural awareness raising and feedback on diagnostic assessment. It will be of interest to undergraduate and graduate students, researchers, teachers and stakeholders who are interested in research on how children learn a second language at primary school.

This book looks at the many ways in which languages can be taught, and at case studies that highlight the practical methods that will help teachers get the best results.

During the Roman empire Greek speakers learned Latin using textbooks that still offer special advantages: authentic and enjoyable vignettes about the ancient world, easy Latin composed by Romans, insight into ancient learning practices. This book makes the ancient Latin-learning materials available to modern students for the first time.

In the early-modern period, the English language was practically unknown outside of Britain and Ireland, so the English who wanted to travel and trade with the wider world had to become language-learners. John Gallagher explores who learned foreign languages in this period, how they did so, and what they did with the competence they acquired.