Language Teaching: Integrational Linguistic Approaches / Edition 1

by Michael Toolan

Overview

This book demonstrates the relevance of an integrational linguistic perspective to a practical, real-world need, namely the learning of languages. Integrational linguistics’ shunning of both realist and structuralist theories of language, its commitment to an unwavering attention to the perspective of the language user, and its adherence to a semiology in which signs are the situated products of interactants interpretive behaviour, mean that it radically reconceptualizes language learning and language teaching. Detractors have implied that IL is so ‘philosophical’ or ‘theoretical’ an exercise that it has no useful bearing on the practical problems of language learning. These papers refute that misconception by demonstrating how an IL stance can help disentangle the conflicting considerations and contradictory assumptions that arise in a host of language teaching situations: first, second- and foreign-language classrooms in a diversity of settings (including India, Australia, the United States, and Hong Kong), with different age-groups of students, whether the focus is on speech or writing, and in more informal settings.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415957533
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/15/2008
Series:	Routledge Advances in Communication and Linguistic Theory
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Michael Toolan is Head of the Department of English at the University of Birmingham. His books include Total Speech: An Integrational Linguistic Approach to Language (1996), Language in Literature (1998), and Narrative (2nd edition: 2001). His Narrative Progression in the Short Story: A Corpus Stylistic Approach is forthcoming from Benjamins.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Language Teaching and Integrational Linguistics

Michael Toolan

Chapter One: Implicit and Explicit Language Teaching

Roy Harris

Chapter Two: Learning to Write: Integrational Linguistics and the Indian Subcontinent

Rukmini Bhaya Nair

Chapter Three: Language Learning, Grammar, and Integrationism

Daniel R. Davis

Chapter Four: Grammaticality and the English Teacher in Hong Kong: An Integrationist Analysis

Christopher Hutton

Chapter Five: Integrationism, New Media Art and Learning to Read Arabic

Sally Pryor

Chapter Six: Teaching a Foreign Language: A Tentative Enterprise

Edda Weigand

Chapter Seven: Assessing Students’ Writing: Just More Grubby Verbal Hygiene?

Michael Toolan

Chapter Eight: Integrational Linguistics and Language Teaching

Charles Owen

Notes on Contributors

Index