1st Edition

Language Teaching Integrational Linguistic Approaches

Edited By Michael Toolan Copyright 2009
    190 Pages
    by Routledge

    192 Pages
    by Routledge

    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.

    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

    Biography

    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.