Challenges for Language Education and Policy Making Space for People [Paperback]

Addressing a wide range of issues in applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, and multilingualism,  this volume focuses on language users, the people. Making creative connections between existing scholarship in language policy and contemporary theory and research in other social sciences, authors from around the world offer new critical perspectives for analyzing language phenomena and language theories, suggesting new meeting points among language users and language policy makers, norms, and traditions in diverse cultural, geographical, and historical contexts. 

Identifying and expanding on previously neglected aspects of language studies, the book is inspired by the work of Elana Shohamy, whose critical view and innovative work on a broad spectrum of key topics in applied linguistics has influenced many scholars in the field to think out of the box and to reconsider some basic commonly held understandings, specifically with regard to the impact of language and languaging on individual language users rather than on the masses.

Preface: Dear Elana, Bernard Spolsky

Introduction: A Portrait of the Researcher in a Never-Ending Journey, Ofra Inbar and Michal Tannenbaum

Chapter 1: Language Tests for Residency and Citizenship and the Conferring of Individuality, Tim McNamara, Kamran Khan, and Kellie Frost

Chapter 2: Setting Standards for Multilingual Curricula to Teach and Test Foreign Languages, Bessie Dendrinos and Voula Gotsoulia

Chapter 3: In the Name of the CEFR: Individuals and Standards,  Monica Barni

Chapter 4: Acknowledging the Diversity of the Language Learner Population in Australia: Towards Context-Sensitive Language Standards, Catherine Anne Elder

Chapter 5: Students Voices: The Challenge of Measuring Speaking for Academic Contexts, Lindsay Brooks and Merrill Swain