Books published by Multilingual Matters

This insightful, practical book can be used as a stand-alone guide for families on their language journey, or as an accompaniment to the author's successful seminars for families and schools. Learn from the author's extensive experience of helping and advising families on how to raise their children as successful bilinguals and multilinguals.

Over the past 40 years, Jim Cummins has originated theories which have had a profound effect on the education of multilingual learners across the world. In this book he traces the development of these theories, and addresses the critiques they have received and their subsequent impact on his thinking and the application of his theories in schools.

This revised edition of Michael Byram's classic 1997 book updates the text in light of both recent research and critiques and commentaries on the 1st edition. The book is an invaluable guide for teachers and curriculum developers, taking them from a definition of Intercultural Communicative Competence through planning for teaching to assessment.

This book breaks new ground in its representation of the voices of people in a superdiverse city. Poetic and compelling, it places the reader at the heart of the market, surrounded by the voices of people from all over the world. Based on four years of ethnographic research, it is a book that reimagines the conventions of ethnographic writing.

This longitudinal study of motivation in extremely successful learners of English and languages other than English provides unique insights into long-term language learning motivation. It reveals the various factors that sustain multiple language learning and stretches our understanding of motivation beyond the recent theorizing of L2 motivation.

This book explores the importance of cross-linguistic similarity in foreign language learning. While linguists have primarily focussed upon differences between languages, learners strive to make use of any similarities to prior linguistic knowledge they can perceive. The role of positive transfer is emphasized as well as the essential differences between comprehension and production. In comprehension of related languages, cross-linguistic similarities are easily perceived while in comprehension of distant languages they are merely assumed. Production may be based on previous perception of similarities, but frequently similarities are here merely assumed. Initially, effective learning is based on quick establishment of cross-linguistic one-to-one relations between individual items. As learning progresses, the learner learns to modify such oversimplified relations. The book describes the ways in which transfer affects different areas of language, taking account of the differences between learning a language perceived to be similar and a language where few or no cross-linguistic similarities can be established.

This book examines the evidence relative to the idea that there is an age factor in first and second language acquisition, evidence that has sources ranging from studies of feral children to evaluations of language programmes in primary schools. It goes on to explore the various explanations that have been advanced to account for such evidence. Finally, it looks at the educational ramifications of the age question, with particular regard to formal second language teaching in the early school years and in 'third age' contexts.

Within the complex process of second language acquisition there lies a highly variable component referred to as the silent period, during which some beginning second language learners may not willingly produce the target language. Silence in Second Language Learning claims that the silent period might represent a psychical event, a non-linguistic as well as a linguistic moment in the continuous process of identity formation and re-formation. Colette Granger calls on psychoanalytic concepts of anxiety, ambivalence, conflict and loss, and on language learning narratives, to undertake a theoretical dialogue with the learner as a being engaged in the psychical work of making, and re-making, an identity. Viewed in its entirety, this study takes the form of a kind of triangulation of three elements: the linguistically described phenomenon of the silent period; the psychoanalytically oriented problem of the making of the self; and the real and remembered experiences of individuals who live in the silent space between languages.

This volume centres around concepts of personal and cultural authenticity in foreign language teaching and learning. The chapters cover a wide range of contexts and disciplines, offering diverse perspectives regarding the role language plays in processes of personal growth, learning, development, self-actualisation and power dynamics.

This volume contributes to the growing body of research on developmental dyslexia, focusing on the behavioural manifestations of the disorder at different levels of the language system. It presents data from experimental and applied research and their applications in language teaching, rehabilitation of reading dysfunctions and teacher training.

This book discusses salient moments of multilingual encounters and focuses on the interplay between language use by individuals and societies, and language-related inequalities or opportunities for speakers. The chapters demonstrate how biographical and speaker-centred approaches can contribute to an understanding of linguistic diversity.

This book provides practical ideas for how children, young people and parents can feel welcomed and affirmed in their multilingual identities and all learners can feel excited by the linguistic diversity of the world's people. The book will be an invaluable resource for educational practitioners, researchers, trainee teachers and teacher educators.

This book provides practical ideas for how children, young people and parents can feel welcomed and affirmed in their multilingual identities and all learners can feel excited by the linguistic diversity of the world's people. The book will be an invaluable resource for educational practitioners, researchers, trainee teachers and teacher educators.

This book explores discourses of foreign language education in Ireland. It adopts a critical approach to SLA, examining the complex interplay between the construction of identity in the school context, discourses of language learning and investment in language learning.