Product Description: Hobbes's extreme political views have commanded so much attention that they have eclipsed his work on language and mind, and on reasoning, personhood, and group formation. But this work is of immense interest in itself, as Philip Pettit shows in Made with Words, and it critically shapes Hobbes's political philosophy. Pettit argues that it was Hobbes, not later thinkers like Rousseau, who invented the invention of language thesis--the idea that language is a cultural innovation that transformed the human mind. The invention, in Hobbes's story, is a double-edged sword. It enables human beings to reason, commit themselves as persons, and incorporate in groups. But it also allows them to agonize about the future and about their standing relative to one another; it takes them out of the Eden of animal silence and into a life of inescapable conflict--the state of nature. Still, if language leads into this wasteland, according to Hobbes, it can also lead out. It can enable people to establish a commonwealth where the words of law and morality have a common, enforceable sense, and where people can invoke the sanctions of an absolute sovereign to give their words to one another in credible commitment and contract. Written by one of today's leading philosophers, Made with Words is both an original reinterpretation and a clear and lively introduction to Hobbes's thought.
This book presents an overview of contemporary information-processing approaches to second language acquisition. This theoretical approach proposes that people learn languages by applying the brain's general information-processing abilities to language input.
The book is clearly written and although intended for an audience with some knowledge and language difficulties would be accessible to a person coming to the topic for the first time....I would recommend it to any practitioner who wanted to find out more about the relationship between speech, language and communication difficulties and the development of literacy.
Language in the Schools: Integrating Linguistics Knowledge into K-12 Teaching addresses two important questions:
*What aspects of linguistic knowledge are most useful for teachers to know?
*What kinds of activities and projects are most effective in introducing those aspects of linguistic knowledge to K-12 students?
The volume focuses on how basic linguistic knowledge can inform teachers' approaches to language issues in the multicultural, linguistically diverse classroom. The text also includes examples of practical applications of language awareness to pedagogy, assessment, and curriculum construction, which support the current goals of language arts, bilingual, and ESL education.
Language in the Schools: Integrating Linguistics Knowledge into K-12 Teaching contributes to the resources on linguistics and education by taking prospective teachers beyond basic linguistics to ways in which linguistics can productively inform their teaching and raise their students' awareness of language.
It is intended as a text for students in teacher education programs who have a basic knowledge of linguistics.
This resource text is designed primarily as a textbook for a preservice TESL/TEFL methods course, but is also useful as a reference and guide for practicing teachers. Forty specialists contribute theoretical background and practical applications for deciding which methods, materials and resources to use in the ESL/EFL classroom. This third edition: revisions of 16 chapters, complete rewritten ten chapters, ten new chapters (communicative language teaching; syllabus design; developing children's listening and speaking skills;
