The latest addition to the series of “Handbooks in linguistics,” this volume is aimed towards scholars and graduate students interested in second and foreign language teaching. It synthesizes studies from diverse lines of research. The entire volume is organized into eight sections with thirty-nine chapters: “Overview” (Part 1), “Social, political and educational context of language teaching” (Part 2), “Psycholinguistic underpinnings of language learning” (Part 3), “Program design” (Part 4), “Course design and materials writing” (Part 5), “Teaching and testing” (Part 6), “Teacher education” (Part 7) and “Assessing and evaluating instruction” (Part 8).
The most impressive feature of the volume is its breadth and currency, which manifests the interdisciplinary nature of this field and the rapid changes in recent years. Part 3, for instance, includes a chapter on “The language-learning brain,” which offers insights on language acquisition from the field of neural research. Part 4 reviews studies of less traditional language programs, such as heritage language programs, study abroad programs, and specific purpose programs designed to cater to the needs of advanced learners. These chapters reflect the increasing mobility in today's world and the expanding population of immigrant children, overseas sojourners, and advanced L2 learners. Part 5 includes a chapter on “Technology-enhanced materials” that offers technological resources available for language teachers as well as evaluations of these resources. These chapters not only inform the readers of recent advances in language learning and teaching, but also challenge them to redefine the field through incorporating new options.
This volume also responds to the emerging geopolitical context in which language teaching and learning takes place nowadays. Part 2 begins by situating the language teaching profession in today's political and historical context. One limitation of this part is its almost exclusive focus on English as a second language (ESL). However, later sections include a variety of languages. Ch. 14 in Part 4, “Less commonly taught languages,” reviews the current status of languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean in education and the pedagogical issues that have emerged from increasing enrollments in these languages in North America. Ch. 25 in Part 6, “Learning to read in new writing systems,” is dedicated to investigating similar issues, with a particular focus on the writing systems of the languages that are typologically different from English or other traditionally commonly taught European languages. These findings supplement our previous knowledge of second language teaching and learning, which was primarily based upon European languages.
In conclusion, this volume is not only an up-to-date addition to the previous volume in the same series by the same editor (Catherine Doughty & Michael Long (eds.), The handbook of second language acquisition, Wiley-Blackwell, 2003) but more importantly it reflects recent advances in a field that is constantly redefined by the changing geopolitical context, social and geographical mobility, and technological developments.
