Teaching Languages Off the Beaten Track

Offering a diverse range of topics and a variety of perspectives, Paradowski and his contributors aim to add cross-disciplinary efforts in their research fields, bringing together psycholinguistic principles and classroom-based developments, thereby reconciling theories and methods with research and practice. There are 19 papers divided into the following three sections: individual factors in language learners, unconventional teaching, and overcoming learners’ problems. Chapters include: learning style preferences of Iranian EFL learners with Kurdish and Persian cultures; the role of cross-linguistic awareness in grammar acquisition in a multilingual classroom; from theory to practice: understanding Cantonese and Mandarin English Learns’ pronunciation phenomena through optimality theory; a text-based approach to teaching writing in the ESL classroom; the influence of Chinese rhetoric on the development of communicative competence in learners of Chinese as a foreign language; using gestures and paralinguistic features of communication in teaching EFL speaking; teaching linguistic and intercultural competence through an emotions-based curriculum; teaching Italian with the aesthetic image; a research study on using technology to teach American sign language. There is a section about the authors, a bibliography, a list of tables and figures, and illustrations. There is no index. Annotation c2015 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)

Michal B. Paradowski is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Applied Linguistics at the University of Warsaw. He is the author of numerous book chapters and articles, an editor and reviewer for journals and research councils, and has been an invited speaker at over 60 scientific events worldwide. He also works as a teacher trainer and ELT consultant for television.