Books

Balboni, Paolo E., Operational models for language education. Perugia: Guerra Edizioni, 2007. Pp. 56. ISBN 978-88-557-0064-1 (pbk).

This book deals with a very complex issue, that of the ‘method’, i.e., the level at which the theories and the philosophy enunciated by the ‘approach’ take organizational shape and create certain contexts wherein class activities can occur. The operational models discussed here are the curriculum, the space of didactic interaction, the module, the teaching unit and the learning unit.

Daloiso, Michele, Early foreign language teaching. Perugia: Guerra Edizioni, 2007. Pp. 64. ISBN 978-88-557-0068-9 (pbk).

This book is a reflection of the increasing interest being shown in the early learning of foreign/second languages in formal contexts, i.e. in the primary school curriculum or, with ever more frequency, in the infant school. Since the early 1980s the Venetian School has carried out research and produced models for early FL teaching. Daloiso consults cognitive, psychological, linguistic and educational sciences in order to develop an epistemological interdisciplinary model of early language teaching.

Gramley, Stephan & Gramley, Vivian (eds.), Bielefeld introduction to applied linguistics. Bielefeld: Aisthesis Verlag, 2008. Pp. viii + 392. ISBN 978-3-89528-706-1 (pbk).

This book is designed to provide a wide-ranging and substantial overview of the field for beginning students. It comprises twenty-seven well-documented contributions based on some of the most salient topics in research and teaching at the Department of Linguistics and Literature at Bielefeld University, in Germany. The book is divided into four major sections which discuss research involving the user/learner (teaching/learning aids; learning processes and methods of gauging them); mental processes (language acquisition and loss); studies involving the linguistic code (metaphor, translation, empirical methods, approaches to texts); and the language community (bilingualism and code-switching, language policy, pragmatics, speaker groups and their languages). Each contribution offers – on sometimes varying levels of detail – a starting point for the young student and provides a useful selection of literature for further reading. Many of the chapters include exercises based on the material presented.

Raya, Manuel Jiménez, Lamb, Terry & Viera, Flávia, Pedagogy for autonomy in language education in Europe: Towards a framework for learner and teacher development. Dublin: Authentik, 2007. Pp. 79. ISBN 978-1-905275-10-6 (pbk).

Produced by the EuroPAL SOCRATES project, this book addresses the needs of teachers who wish to develop their role as facilitators of language learning at a time when learner autonomy is becoming a prominent goal in formal education systems across Europe. Chapters focus on the context, the learner and the teacher in mapping pedagogy for autonomy. A final chapter operationalises the principles presented in the book to integrate with a global focus on the idea of learner-centredness. The printed book is in English. Translations into Spanish, Portuguese, French and German are provided on the accompanying CD-ROM.

Little, Blanton Price, Foundation course: The basics of English for Italian university students. Montadori Università, 2008. Pp. xviii+222, ISBN 978-88-88242-87-3 (pbk).

This course is based on an innovative theoretical structure which encourages the development of student autonomy by building a solid foundation as rapidly as possible so that the genuinely motivated student can continue his or her learning process independently in different directions for different purposes and with a plurality of methods. Translated into the syllabus levels currently established by the Council of Europe, this means that the evolution of the student into a phase of conceptual and functional independence should normally take place between levels A2+ and B1. In more traditional terms, this means that this coursebook can be used with a wide range of ability levels. The target audience for the book is a homogeneous group of mother-tongue Italian university students, which means that lessons can easily be divided into two parts: one based on practical language tasks in English, and another one which presents the theory section in Italian and permits the students to study more subtle aspects of English in a reasonably concentrated period of time.

Journal

International Journal of Translation. Bahri Publications, 1749A/5, 1st Floor, Gobindpuri Extension, P.O. Box 4453, Kalkaji, New Delhi 110019, India. ISSN . Vol. 19.2 (2007), pp. 5–102.

A special issue devoted to translation and philosophy, edited by Alexander Kozin (Freie Universität Berlin), featuring empirical work which reflects how philosophy has informed the discipline of translation from its very inception. For the authors featured in this issue translation is not an abstraction but a phenomenon which presupposes the immediacy of an encounter as a matter of ethics (Alexander Kozin), aesthetics (Michael LeVan), the uncanny (Tanja Staehler), the just (Eileen Brennan), and the psychic (Celine Surprenant). Several important themes play off each other in this issue: the ethics of the face-to-face encounter, equity without equivalence, the aesthetics of encountering difference, translation hermeneutics, and translation and psyche. With these themes the authors hope to expand and simultaneously encourage philosophical examinations of translation.