Capitalization and Punctuation (Workbook)

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Active reading techniques for easier understanding and better retention. Analogies and special skills-focus strands reinforce lessons. Contexts include charts, graphs, maps, produce and medicine labels, how-to directions, employee handbooks, catalogs, credit cards, housing ads, and more. This dynamic worktext series was designed for students who still have trouble understanding what they read, writing a simple report, or finding the appropriate words to express themselves. For maximum efficiency, the easy to use worktext format combines the instructional core of a textbook with the built in response mode of a workbook. A systematic, incremental teaching method promotes progress by steadily building confidence.
Pages: 112
Edition: SDL English In Context
ISBN: 9781602911109
Publisher Stock #: SDLSP3504
 
  
Product Details
    * Pub. Date: November 2009
    * Publisher: Taylor & Francis, Inc.
    * Series: ESL & Applied Linguistics Professional Series
    * ISBN-13: 9780415991452
    * ISBN: 0415991455
    * Edition Description: New Edition

Synopsis
This hands-on, practical guide for ESL/EFL teachers and teacher educators outlines, for those who are new to doing action research, what it is and how it works. Straightforward and reader friendly, it introduces the concepts and offers a step-by-step guide to going through an action research process, including illustrations drawn widely from international contexts. Specifically, the text addresses:
    * action research and how it differs from other forms of research
    * the steps involved in developing an action research project
    * ways of developing a research focus
    * methods of data collection
    * approaches to data analysis
    * making sense of action research for further classroom action.

Each chapter includes a variety of pedagogical activities:
    * Pre-Reading questions ask readers to consider what they already know about the topic
    * Reflection Points invite readers to think about/discuss what they have read
    * action points ask readers to carry out action-research tasks based on what they have read
    * Classroom Voices illustrate aspects of action research from teachers internationally
    * Summary Points provide a synopsis of the main points in the chapter
 
Bringing the 'how-to' and the 'what' together, Doing Action Research in English Language Teaching is the perfect text for BATESOL and MATESOL courses in which action research is the focus or a required component.
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Biography

Anne Burns is Professor in the Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University, Australia, and former Dean of the Division of Linguistics and Psychology.
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Robert Jeffcoate: Starting English Teaching

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This book is aimed at new teachers and at teachers new to the teaching of English. Its main focus is the secondary classroom, but primary teachers too will find here much to interest them. Taking the National Curriculum in English as a starting point, but not necessarily the last word on the subject, Robert Jeffcoate looks at the theoretical issues involved in thinking about what English means, defining goals and planning the curriculum. He shows the how to go about developing a repertoire of skills in the different curriculum areas from drama teaching to teaching about the language. His suggestions are illustrated with detailed examples of classroom practice and with many quotations from pupils'' own work.



Arthur Hughes: Testing for Language Teacher

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It seems that a lot of books in the market on testing deal with the theoretical background of designing large scale tests on the institutional level. Those sorts of books are not so useful for the practicing teacher who is looking for a little guidance on improving their test writing skills for daily classes. This book is written with that teacher in mind. It doesn't overload the reader with loads of statistics, but if you are interested in the statistical basis of the ideas presented in this book, there is a section on statistics in the appendix. 


Basically, this book is divided into three sections. The first section covers the different types of test a teacher might want to give and the differences between those types. The second part delves into the theory of validity and realiability, but doesn't overwhelm the reader with loads of numbers and figures. The third part goes into how to test different skills. The attitude the author takes toward testing is that a test should focus on one of the four basic skills: speaking, reading, writing, or listening. Grammar and vocabulary, he claims, are not ends in themselves, but merely components of the four basic skills, so they don't need to be given much emphasis in testing. I thought that was an interesting idea.






A major addition to the growing body of work on communicative language teaching, this book provides a balanced introduction to the theoretical and practical aspects of communicative task design. It is targeted toward all second and foreign language teachers, and is ideal for innovative teachers who wish to develop their own tasks, or adopt/adapt those of others. The purpose of the book is to integrate recent research and practice in language teaching into a framework for analyzing learning tasks. This framework should help foreign and second language teachers select, adapt or create their own communicative tasks. Intended for both practicing and trainee teachers of second or foreign language, the ideas presented can be employed in a variety of teaching situations with different levels of students. It should be useful for teachers of children and adults, and to teachers of English for Specific Purposes as well as those of general purpose English.


This book integrates recent research and practice in language teaching into a framework for analysing learning tasks.


How to Teach Speaking

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For many EFL learners, their main desire is to speak English. How then do we set about helping them with this goal? This useful guide skilfully contributes to this process by giving numerous practical ideas about how to teach speaking, ideas which are always clearly grounded in theory.

Chapters one to three lay the groundwork for the rest of the book by describing the nature of speech and speaking in an L2. Thornbury begins by describing what speakers do as they speak, before moving on to what they know and finally to a description of what speaking in an L2 entails. This includes a comparison between spoken and written grammar, a description of the pragmatic knowledge speakers make use of and the kinds of vocabulary L2 speakers need to employ. The analysis here is clear and accessible without being simplistic and may be of particular use to pre-service teachers, though it would work equally as a refresher for more experienced teachers. It is certainly something I wish had been available at the time of my initial teacher training course.

In chapter three Thornbury describes lesson frameworks based on behaviourist, cognitivist and sociocultural views of language learning. From this basis he establishes a framework that contains elements within each view: learning begins with some form of awareness of a new language feature, this awareness is then appropriated or integrated into a learner’s current interlangauge until it is finally ready for autonomous use. Each chapter that follows includes a rationale for each type of learning and practical ideas to implement awareness raising, appropriation and autonomy when teaching speaking.

Many of the ideas for appropriation and autonomy, such as mingles, drills and discussion tasks will be familiar to many practising teachers but will serve as a useful collection of ideas for newer teachers. However, of particular use here are the ideas for awareness raising in chapter four. Intuition might suggest that teaching speaking should involve a large focus on production but there is often great value in raising learners’ awareness about spoken language.Thornbury provides numerous suggestions for helping students to notice features of speech such as clear procedure for using listening texts to raise awareness. Thornbury suggests that teachers start from comprehension of texts before focusing on a feature of speech such as underlining lexical chunks. Like many of the ideas this procedure is simple, easy to follow, but crucially may not be intuitive for teachers, especially at the pre-service level.

Overall then, this is a very useful book, which it is hard to find fault with. The only quibbles would be the slight prevalence of activities aimed at sentence (rather then discourse) level and the limited amount of suggested follow – up reading. But these really are only quibbles – this is a valuable book and one to recommend for any teacher, particularly those just starting out in ELT.

Appraising Research in Second Language Learning

Posted by aditamarezki On 11:49 AM 0 comments
Graeme Keith Porte (2002)
Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Pp. xx + 267
ISBN 1-58811-254-3

Quantitative research is one of the most common research methods in the field of second language acquisition today, and in fact, the majority of articles published in journals such as Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Language Learning, Second Language Research and The Modern Language Journal employ quantitative methodology. This approach, which typically relies on large numbers of subjects, experimental conditions and statistical tests, has done much to drive the field of SLA forward, but for those new to the field of SLA or new to quantitative research, quantitative studies may be not only difficult to evaluate, but also to produce.

This is where Graeme Porte's recent book, Appraising Research in Second Language Learning, plays a critical role. Assuming minimal background knowledge on the reader's part, Porte leads the reader step-by-step through each section of a quantitative study, giving readers a solid foundation from which to both appraise and produce such studies on their own.

Chapter I, for example, covers the opening sections of a quantitative study: the abstract, the problem statement, the literature review, and the research questions. For each section, Porte provides a useful "checklist" of guiding questions. In his discussion of literature reviews, for example, the reader is asked to think about such questions as "Are you satisfied that the review describes the most relevant work done and indicates its relative importance?", "Are you satisfied that the review has sufficient critical address of the literature?" and "Does the review succeed in convincing you of the need for the study?" Each question is then followed by a thorough discussion.

In Chapter II, Porte moves on to discuss the sections dealing with subjects, materials, procedures, research design and methods of data collection. This section uses the same question-answer organizational principle as Chapter I, and provides specific questions on many of the key issues that arise when conducting qualitative research, such as validity, reliability, and different types of experimental designs (e.g., true experimental, quasi-experimental, and so on). Important terms such as these are bolded and are also defined in the book's comprehensive "Glossary of key terms in quantitative research."

Chapter III addresses the ever-important results section and the use of various statistical tests. Using clear and accessible language, Porte helps the reader understand what, for example, t-tests and analyses of variance are, as well as how they are used. This discussion is further supported by a useful flowchart in the appendix, which gives specific criteria for deciding when to use a particular statistical test. Finally, in Chapter IV, Porte focuses on the discussion and conclusion sections, once again providing useful guiding questions. [-1-]

While these four chapters provide a comprehensive overview of the characteristics of an effective quantitative study, the book takes the additional step of including a "Workbook" chapter, which alone is worth the price of the book. Here, Porte provides sample sections (e.g., abstract, literature review, results, etc.), guiding questions to help the reader evaluate the quality of each section, and sample answers which the readers can consult. This Workbook allows those who are studying independently to test their understanding of the material presented in the book, but could be easily adapted for use with larger groups (e.g., research methodology classes).

Assessing Vocabulary

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Series: Cambridge Language Assessment
Author: Read, John
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Format: Paperback
ISBN-10: 0521627419
ISBN-13: 9780521627412
Publication Date: 2000

Description: This volume presents a framework that expands the traditional concept of a vocabulary test to cover a range of procedures for assessing the vocabulary knowledge of second language learners. research on vocabulary acquisition and use; research on vocabulary assessment; vocabulary tests - four case studies; the design of discrete vocabulary tests; comprehensive measures of vocabulary; further developments in vocabulary assessment.

Contents: The place of vocabulary in language assessment; the nature of vocabulary; research on vocabulary acquisition and use; research on vocabulary assessment; vocabulary tests - four case studies; the design of discrete vocabulary tests; comprehensive measures of vocabulary; further developments in vocabulary assessment.



The Picture Word Inductive Method (PWIM) is a clever and useful practical model for teaching beginning reading and writing. In meeting students where they are, the PWIM uses students' own background knowledge to engage them in discussion and use of words in many ways. Students help the teacher identify objects, actions, and descriptions in an image, all the while learning to spell, write, and identify the written words for existing oral vocabulary. While initially intended for only young first and beginning readers (ideally second grade and below), there are definitely positive implications for possible constructive use in foreign language or English Language Learner classrooms. 


PWIM uses engaging images and illustrations to link to students' prior knowledge. From there, instructors are able to develop extensive sight word lists, phonics grouping and development lessons, as well as more advanced writing techniques, such as descriptive writing, creating titles, or simple sentences or paragraphs. Categorization and word sorting are common activities associated with this literacy method. Students identify commonalities between words, while discovering the "code" that is the English language. The PWIM is an inquiry-based language arts teaching method which, when used properly, can increase student success in the classroom in numerous ways. While initially seen as teaching only reading, the PWIM is an interactive, interdisciplinary model by which students can feel engaged, empowered, and become growing and developing readers, writers, and thinkers.




Comprehensive, up to date, and highly practical, this volume discusses factors that affect struggling readers in grades 7-12 and provides research-based strategies for improving their reading and writing skills. Chapters from leading authorities examine why some adolescents have trouble achieving reading proficiency, describe schoolwide policies and programs that support literacy, and suggest age-appropriate classroom practices for promoting reading success. The book shows how literacy skills and strategies can be incorporated into instruction in all areas of the curriculum. Essential topics include assessment; building core competencies, such as fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary; and working with struggling adolescent English language learners.





Teaching the Brain to Read

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Teaching the Brain to Read: Strategies for Improving Fluency, Vocabulary, and Comprehension is a great resource of integrated information. Both brain research and reading research have been a source of great debate, and both with a potential for developing a template for learning to read and teaching how to learn to read. Dr. Willis has undertaken an extremely difficult task presenting both brain and reading research and translating the findings in a manner that would be invaluable for all educators and parents. 


Dr. Willis' book is unique in that it presents big ideas and strategies to promote children's "reading brains" integrates a fine linguistic grain and emphasizes the wonderful capacities of children. The knowledge gained from this book is well worth the read. 


Dr Willis is to be commanded for presenting the research data in a manner that is responsible and clear on the limits of what is known and what might be inferred from the findings. What we know about cognitive functions must at some point be compatible with neuroscience findings. Dr. Willis has demonstrated the compatibility of neuroscience research with strategies to promote successful reading. 




Dr. Jules Zimmer 
Dean Emeritus, University of California Graduate School of Education


Teaching ESL EFL Listening and Speaking

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Using a framework based on principles of teaching and learning, this guide for teachers and teacher trainees provides a wealth of suggestions for helping learners at all levels of proficiency develop their listening and speaking skills and fluency. By following these suggestions, which are organized around four strands – meaning-focused input, meaning-focused output, language-focused learning, and fluency development – teachers will be able to design and present a balanced program for their students.

Teaching ESL/EFL Listening and Speaking, and its companion text, Teaching ESL/EFL Reading and Writing, are similar in format and the kinds of topics covered, but do not need to be used together. Drawing on research and theory in applied linguistics, their focus is strongly hands-on, featuring

    * easily applied principles,

    * a large number of useful teaching techniques, and

    * guidelines for testing and monitoring.

All Certificate, Diploma, Masters and Doctoral courses for teachers of English as a second or foreign language include a teaching methods component. The texts are designed for and have been field tested in such programs.

Listening in the Language Classroom

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This book, which combines theory and practical suggestions, firstly suggests ways of adapting the comprehension approach to make it more effective and more conducive to learner autonomy, by recommending more actual listening work by learners and correspondingly less intervention by the teacher, more interaction between learners in class, and the use of independent out-of-class listening. Most classroom listening takes the form of ‘auditory scanning’, and there is a plea for greater variety, with a better alignment of materials, tasks and the types of listening they require, including more interactive listening-and-speaking, but not neglecting intensive work involving re-playing of short recorded segments. The book then goes on to offer alternatives to the comprehension approach, focusing less on product (getting the right answers) and more on the processes which expert listeners use. This involves a consideration of how listeners manage to identify words which reach their ears in forms very different from idealised citation forms, and how they construct interpretations of what they hear. If learners can learn to use the same processes and to make judicious use of compensatory strategies, they will acquire a transferable skill which will stand them in good stead after their course of study finishes.




This book and its companion volume (Teaching ESL/EFL Listening and Speaking) were the core texts of two courses I took for my MA Applied Linguistics. The central tenet of the books is that EFL/ESL classroom learning should consist of equal amounts of the "four strands" of language learning - meaningful input, meaningful output, fluency, and direct attention to language items. 


Compared with the other required texts I read while completing my MA, this book is highly pedagogically relevant (ie: some of the suggestions appear to be actually useful for classroom teachers). 


The book contains a lot of suggestions for teachers in terms of tasks and activities. It gives a brief description of the research that underpins the suggestions and also suggests further reading material that might prove useful for writing essays and assignments at university level. 


Having said that, I have found that I've used very few of the suggestions in my job as an EFL teacher at a South Korean elementary school. The reason is that the book focuses on specific tasks and activities, rather than explaining how to develop lesson plans that incorporate those tasks/activities. In other words, the book has a narrow focus.



Teaching and Learning Vocabulary

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Although proficiency in vocabulary has long been recognized as basic to reading proficiency, there has been a paucity of research on vocabulary teaching and learning over the last two decades. Recognizing this, the U.S. Department of Education recently sponsored a Focus on Vocabulary conference that attracted the best-known and most active researchers in the vocabulary field. This book is the outgrowth of that conference. It presents scientific evidence from leading research programs that address persistent issues regarding the role of vocabulary in text comprehension. Part I examines how vocabulary is learned; Part II presents instructional interventions that enhance vocabulary; and Part III looks at which words to choose for vocabulary instruction.



Reading and Writing to Learn

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Research indicates that writing and reading should be taught in tandem. This content-area resource puts writing to learn into practice across curricular areas. It shows teachers how to present strategies common to good readers to increase understanding of a text. Students are taught to predict and infer, visualize, connect, question, understand word meanings, organize, clarify/monitor, and evaluate/reflect. Grades 3-12


Good writers use writing to learn, to actively work and think about content areas and achieve ownership. In fact, research indicates that writing and reading should be taught in tandem. This content-area resource puts that research into practice across curricular areas. It shows teachers how to present strategies common to good readers to increase understanding of a text. Students are taught to predict and infer, visualize, connect, question, understand word meanings, organize, clarify/monitor, and evaluate/reflect.


The text is divided into 5 sections: Affective Teaching/Learning Strategies; Before Reading and Writing Strategies; During Reading and Writing Ideas; After Reading and Writing Strategies; and Planning a Lesson to Teach Incorporating Reading and Writing Strategies. Each activity/strategy offers an explanation page on how to use the idea for both teachers and students. A reproducible is available for immediate use. Grades 3-12.


Reading and Writing to Learn is a content area resource for teachers and discusses reading and writing instruction research and puts it into practice across curricular areas. Grades 3-12.



Product Details
Pub. Date: April 2008
Publisher: Libraries Unlimited
Format: Paperback , 222pp
Sales Rank: 389,493
ISBN-13: 9781591585855
ISBN: 1591585856

Best Practice for Teaching Reading

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"Very logical and easy to follow. Teachers can easily incorporate these ideas in their teaching."
—Susan Bailey, Middle School Reading Specialist
Mequon-Thiensville School District, WI


Enrich your reading instruction with classroom-proven strategies from the nation's best teachers!


Following the successful format of the companion volumes for teaching writing, mathematics, science, and social studies, Best Practices for Teaching Reading presents firsthand accounts of teachers' most successful instructional strategies and lessons for teaching reading. Randi Stone brings readers into the classrooms of award-winning teachers who share their outstanding strategies for reaching elementary, middle, and high school learners with diverse learning styles and abilities.


With 40 classroom-tested strategies, the book provides practical guidance for building students' decoding and vocabulary skills while developing their comprehension and motivation for reading. This collection of best practices presents ways to help students:


  • Get excited about reading
  • Make connections to different texts
  • Become effective writers as well as readers
  • Use literacy skills across the curriculum

Veteran and new teachers alike will find an abundance of fresh ideas to teach reading while helping students build confidence, increase academic achievement, and develop critical thinking skills.




Product Details
Pub. Date: October 2008
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Sales Rank: 853,301
ISBN-13: 9781412924597
ISBN: 1412924596
Edition Description: New Edition




We've learned a lot in recent years about the important role vocabulary plays in making meaning, yet many teachers still struggle with vocabulary instruction that goes beyond weekly word lists. Effective vocabulary instruction is particularly vital in the content areas, where the specialized language used by “insiders” often creates a barrier to understanding for those new to the subjects. In Inside Words, Janet Allen merges recent research and key content-area teaching strategies to show teachers how to help students understand the academic vocabulary found in textbooks, tests, articles, and other informational texts.


Each instructional tool is listed alphabetically along with its purpose: building background knowledge; teaching words that are critical to comprehension; providing support during reading and writing; developing a conceptual framework; and assessing students' understanding of words and concepts.


Inside Words builds on Janet's previous books Words, Words, Words and Tools for Teaching Content Literacy, to provide a much-needed middle and secondary school resource for teaching vocabulary, not only in the language arts, but in all of the content areas.


Table of Content
Contents
Instructional Strategies and the Tools That Support Them
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Concept Circles
Concept Ladde
r
Concepts and Vocabulary: Categories and Labels
Contextual Redefinition
Dictoglos
Focused Cloze
Frayer Model
Frequent Contact
"I'm Thinking of a Word..."
I Spy: A Word Scavenger Hunt
Lead
List-Group-Label
Possible Questions
Possible Sentences
Previewing Content Vocabulary
Semantic Feature Analysis
Semantic Mapping
Survival of the Fittest
Think-Pair-Share: Collaborate for Understanding
Vocab-O-Gram
Word Sort
Word Walls
Appendix



About the Authors
Janet Allen is an international consultant recognized for her comprehensive work in reading education. After teaching reading and English for nearly twenty years in Maine, Janet relocated to the University of Central Florida where she taught reading, writing and English education courses; directed the Central Florida Writing Project; and, assisted in the creation of the Orange County Literacy Project. She is now a full-time researcher, writer, and consultant in schools and districts involved in rethinking their approaches to literacy and learning.
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Reviews
Education Book Review - May 2008
"This concept of insider-outsider status, and how it can affect students' ability to fully comprehend certain content area texts and topics, is a powerful argument for teaching vocabulary, and one of the most useful points that Allen makes in this book."















Review
This book is a must for all interested in SLA, multilingualism and language learning in general. It offers a well-composed selection of thought-provocative perspectives stemming from neuro- and psycholinguistic studies focusing on the second language learner. The various scholars study a wide range of topics in two promising areas of research and thereby give evidence of the multifaceted nature of methodologies used in modern linguistics. This source will certainly open up new research avenues in the field. Ulrike Jessner, Universitat Innsbruck, Austria.

Product Description
Neurolinguistic and Psycholinguistic Perspectives on SLA is a collection of twelve chapters, reporting on research results and presenting theoretical insights into the processes of language acquisition. The first part outlines the neurobiological processes which assist formation of additional language in the brain, while the second part offers psycholinguistic modelling of a number of components of second language competence.

About the Author
Janusz Arabski and Adam Wojtaszek both work at the University of Silesia, Poland. Their research interests include psycholinguistics, language acquisition and linguistic pragmatics. They have invited twelve researchers and practitioners in neurolinguistics and psycholinguistics to contribute papers reporting on their recent studies related to the processes of language acquisition. The editors and the contributing authors are active members of many scientific committees and organizations devoted to the investigation of language acquisition processes, they regularly participate in many conferences and publish extensively. The author list comprises experienced scholars as well as young researchers.


Neurolinguistic and Psycholinguistic Perspectives on SLA
Edited by: Janusz Arabski and Adam Wojtaszek
ISBN-13: 978-1-84769-241-2 (hbk)

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