laugh and learn

95 ways to use humor for more effective teaching and training

This book is written to provide a low-risk, affordable way for teachers, trainers, and speakers to start putting humor to work for them. In the process, however, it’s hoped this book lead all communicators to an appreciation of how humor can help them convey virtually any topic far more effectively, resulting in substantial long-term benefits for themselves, their listeners, and their organizations. Readers will be fascinated that humor fulfills for biological purposes—a major one of which seems to be to make you think and work better. Like every other biological function, humor seems essentially to have been implanted to ensure the continuance of the species.

It is intented that after reading this book you will:

❖ Feel clear about the benefits humor can bring to the invaluable

work you do

❖ Be convinced to start using humor

❖ Have a ready “tool box” of tried-and-true techniques to draw on

❖ Feel fearless about using humor in your classroom (and outside

it, too)

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Planning and Task Performance in a Second Language

The LL&LT monograph series publishes monographs as well as edited volumes on applied and methodological issues in the field of language pedagogy. The focus of the series is on subjects such as classroom discourse and interaction; language diversity in educational settings; bilingual education; language testing and language assessment; teaching methods and teaching performance; learning trajectories in second language acquisition; and written language learning in educational settings.

Planning and its role in task-based performance are of both theoretical interest to second language acquisition (SLA) researchers and of practical significance to language teachers. In the case of SLA researchers, planning is important because it links in with the current interest in the role of attention in language learning.

The purpose of this book is to bring together a series of articles on the nature of planning and its effects on task-based performance in laboratory, classroom and testing contexts. The idea for the book originated in a colloquium on this topic given at AILA Conference in Singapore in December 2002. Papers given by Bygate and Samuda, Elder and Iwashita, Ellis and Fanguan, and Sanguran were subsequently developed into chapters for this book.

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Handbook of Multilingualism and Multilingual Communication

It has been estimated that the majority of children across the globe grow up speaking more than one language, but these bilingual and multilingual children differ from each other in terms of when exposure to each language began, and the sociolinguistic context in which their languages are spoken. These differences have consequences for acquisition patterns and rates of the languages, as well as for ultimate proficiency in each language. Furthermore, the research issues and questions surrounding dual and multiple language acquisition are often different depending on the kind of child bilingual/multilingual.

This great source covers concepts such as:

1. Different kinds of child bilinguals and multilinguals
2. Multilingualism and the family
3. Growing up in a multilingual community: Insights from language socialization
4. Becoming bi- or multi-lingual later in life
5. Becoming bilingual through bilingual education
6. Bilingual children in monolingual schools
7. From minority programmes to multilingual education
8. From biliteracy to pluriliteracies
9. Multilingualism and Specific Language Impairment (SLI)
10. Measuring bilingualism
11. Code-switching as a conversational strategy
12. Mixed codes
13. Multilingual forms of talk and identity work
14. Crossing – negotiating social boundaries
15. Bilingual professionals
16. Multilingualism in the workplace
17. Multilingualism and commerce
18. Societal multilingualism: reality, recognition and response
19. Multilingualism of autochthonous minorities
20. Multilingualism of new minorities (in migratory contexts)
21. Multilingualism in ex-colonial countries
22. Multilingualism and transnationalism

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How to Write a Thesis

How to Write a Thesis provides a down-to-earth guide to help students shape their theses. It offers valuable advice as well as practical tips and techniques, incorporating useful boxed summaries and checklists to help students stay on track or regain their way.

The book is the culmination of many years of work with postgraduates and academics and covers all aspects of the research, writing and editing involved in the process of successfully completing a thesis.

In this book, the author moves beyond the basics of thesis writing, introducing practical writing techniques such as free writing, generative writing and binge writing. This edition now deals with the range of different doctorates on offer and integrates more examples of thesis writing. Building on the success of the evidence-based approach used in the first edition, there is also new coverage of Masters theses and undergraduate research projects, along with outlines of useful generic structures for social science and humanities projects.

How to Write a Thesis is the most grounded guide available to students on the practicalities surrounding thesis writing and should be recommended reading for, and by, all supervisors.

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Globalization and Language Teaching

‘This book represents a major theoretical and empirical statement on the impact of globalization on language policies and practice around the world. It addresses diverse and complex questions on the subject from a variety of perspectives, and in a broad and richly comprehensive manner . . . An invaluable resource.’

Language is a vital commodity in the globalized world. The services- and information based economy makes increasing demands on workers’ language skills; new technologies and media change the cultural landscape; migration produces more linguistically diverse populations worldwide.

These developments change the conditions in which languages are learned and taught. Globalization and Language Teaching considers the issues globalization raises for second language learning and teaching. Drawing together various strands in the globalization debate, this rich collection combines theory with case studies, exploring concerns that range from literacy to bilingualism and from identity to the internet.

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Explorations in Pragmatics

This volume consists of selected papers from the LAUD Symposium held on March 27–30, 2006 in Landau, Germany, including the keynote address by John Searle, six of the plenary talks and four selected papers from the conference. These papers reflect current trends in international research in pragmatics over recent years. The authors, coming from 10 different countries, represent all angles of pragmatics.

The papers address these issues from a variety of directions.

• ·         Language use and pragmatics from philosophical perspective.
• ·         cognitive aspect of pragmatics
• ·         Intercultural aspects of pragmatics.
• ·         Corpus based methodology in different ways within pragmatics
• ·         Cross-linguistic and cross-cultural

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Expertise in Second Language Learning and Teaching

There is a sense in which almost any statement about language, language learning or language teaching may be said to hold implications for a view about language learning or teaching expertise. Thus an observation about the nature of language implies a view about what it is that an expert user of the language is able to do. Similarly, a statement about language learning is interpretable as an observation about the processes which an expert learner has successfully undertaken.

By now, at the start of the twenty-first century, expertise studies have been undertaken in a large number of domains (and Table 1.1 of Chapter 1 lists a number of them). Applied linguistics is a relative newcomer to the list, and this is in itself a major reason why the time is ripe for a volume looking at what has been done in other domains, as well as what is emerging in the areas of second language learning and teaching.

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Experimental Pragmatics

How does our knowledge of language on the one hand, and of the context on the other permit us to understand what we are told, resolve ambiguities, grasp both explicit and implicit content, recognize the force of a speech act, appreciate metaphor and irony? These issues have been studied in two disciplines: pragmatics and psycholinguistics, with limited interactions between the two. Pragmatics is rooted in the philosophy of language and in linguistics and has spawned competing theories using as evidence a mixture of intuitions about interpretation and observations of behaviour.

Psycholinguistics has developed sophisticated experimental methods in the study of verbal communication, but has not used them to test systematic pragmatic theories. This volume lays down the bases for a new field, Experimental Pragmatics, that draws on pragmatics, psycholinguistics and also on the psychology of reasoning. Chapters in this volume either review pioneering work or present novel ways of articulating theories and experimental methods in the area. In this introduction we outline some core pragmatic issues and approaches and relate them to experimental work in psycholinguistics and in the psychology of reasoning.

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Task-Based Language Teaching

The concept of ‘task’ has become an important element in syllabus design, classroom teaching and learner assessment. It underpins several significant research agendas, and it has influenced educational policymaking in both ESL and EFL settings.

This book began life as the second edition to Designing Tasks for the Communicative Classroom. The original volume was written in the mid- 1980s, and was published in 1989. At that time, task-based language teaching was beginning to arouse attention. Although it was more than a distant prospect, it was far from a mainstream concept. As with the original book, this volume is aimed at practising teachers in ELT and applied linguists (teacher trainers, language planners, and materials writers), as well as teachers in preparation.

In addition to a complete revamping and updating of principles and ideas from Designing Tasks, four areas deserved their own chapter length treatment. These were:

• A model for task-based language teaching (TBLT) that articulated the

relationship between tasks and other curricular elements.

• The empirical basis for TBLT.

• The place of a focus on form in TBLT.

• Assessing TBLT.

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