Linguistics for Language Teachers: Lessons for Classroom Practice

Description

This book is an accessible introduction to linguistics specifically tailored for teachers of second language/bilingual education. It guides teachers stepwise through the components of language, focusing on the areas of linguistics that are most pertinent for teaching. Throughout the book there are opportunities to analyze linguistic data and discuss language-related issues in various educational and social contexts. Readers will be able to identify patterns in actual language use to inform their teaching and help learners advance to the next level. A highly readable account of how language works, this book is an ideal text for teacher education courses. Review: Lingustic for language - Good book, great conditions when it arrived Review: Good start; looking forward to the next edition - I used LFLT this past semester as the main text in an Intro to Linguistics for MA TESOL students. I appreciated it's attempt to relate linguistics content to classroom issues, although it was surprisingly quiet on topics one might have expected in this context: phonemic awareness, morphological awareness, phonics vs whole Lg. Etc. The problems sets are skimpy and could have included more relevant to classroom practice. I also wasn't sure how much the little "Voices from the Classroom" boxes contributed. The chapters are solid, contentwise, with the exception of the syntax chapter, which is (frankly) weak. Instructors will need to correct some of the insufficiencies in their rules, add discussion about complements vs. modifiers, etc. All in all, though, a good outing whose initial deficiencies can all be fixed in later editions.