Books
Dalton-Puffer, Christiane, Discourse in content and language integrated learning (CLIL) classrooms (Language Learning & Language Teaching 20). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2007. Pp. xii + 330. ISBN 978 90 272 1979 4 (hbk); ISBN 978 90 272 1981 7 (pbk).
The label CLIL applies to classrooms where a foreign language (e.g. English) is used as a medium of instruction in content subjects. This book provides a first in-depth analysis of the kind of communicative abilities which are embodied in such CLIL classrooms. It examines teacher and student talk at secondary school level from different discourse-analytic angles, taking into account the interpersonal pragmatics of classroom discourse and how school subjects are talked into being during lessons. The analysis shows how CLIL classroom interaction is strongly shaped by its institutional context, which in turn conditions the ways in which students experience, use and learn the target language. The research presented here suggests that CLIL programmes require more explicit language learning goals in order to fully exploit their potential for furthering the learners' appropriation of a foreign language as a medium of learning.
Randall, Mick, Memory, psychology and second language learning (Language Learning & Language Teaching 19). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2007. Pp. x + 220. ISBN 978 90 272 1977 0 (hbk); ISBN 978 90 272 1978 7 (pbk).
This book explores the contributions that cognitive linguistics and psychology, including neuropsychology, have made to the understanding of the way that second languages are processed and learnt. It examines areas of phonology, word recognition and semantics, examining ‘bottom-up’ decoding processes as compared with ‘top-down’ processes as they affect memory. It also discusses second language learning from the acquisition/learning and nativist/connectionist perspectives. These ideas are then related to the methods that are used to teach second languages, primarily English, in formal classroom situations. This examination involves both ‘mainstream’ communicative approaches, and more traditional methods widely used to teach EFL throughout the world. The book is intended to act both as a textbook for students who are studying second language teaching and as an exploration of issues for the interested teacher who would like to further extend their understanding of the cognitive processes underlying their teaching.
Journals
Indian Journal of Applied Linguistics. Bahri Publications, 1749A/5, 1st Floor, Gobindpuri Extension, P.O. Box 4453, Kalkaji, New Delhi 110019, India. ISSN 0379-0037.
Vol. 33.1 (2007), pp. 1–142. Carries two book reviews and eight articles by authors at universities in Saudi Arabia, Spain, India, United Arab Emirates, Iran, Germany, the USA and China. Most of the articles deal with practical and theoretical aspects of second-language language teaching (L2 English and French), and one article considers ways in which the findings of clinical linguistics could and should be made relevant and explicit to clinicians working in speech-language pathology.
International Journal of Translation, a half-yearly review of translation studies. Bahri Publications, 1749A/5, 1st Floor, Gobindpuri Extension, P.O. Box 4453, Kalkaji, New Delhi 110019, India. ISSN 0940-9819.
Vol. 19.1 (2007), pp. 1–173. Special issue Lexical resources for machine translation, guest-edited by Alexander Gelbukh. Carries ten articles by authors at universities and research establishments in Spain, Brazil, Israel, Latvia, Finland, UK, Portugal, India, Bulgaria, China and Mexico. Within the broad topic of machine translation, the articles deal with natural language processing, dictionaries and grammars, computer-assisted translation, the translation process, and cultural and cognitive aspects of translation.
ERRATUM
VOLUME 41 PART 1 JANUARY 2008 PP 15
Teaching third languages: Findings, trends and challenges
ulrike jessner
The publisher wishes to apologise for the incorrect spelling. Where the name was spelt Skuttnab-Kangas, T. it should have been spelt as follows: Skutnabb-Kangas, T.
