The testing and assessment of second language learners is an essential part of the language learning process. Glenn Fulcher's Testing Second Language Speaking is a state-of-the-art volume that considers the assessment of speaking from historical, theoretical and practical perspectives.
The book offers the first systematic, comprehensive and up-to-date treatment of the testing of second language speaking. Written in a clear and accessible manner, it covers:

• Explanations of the process of test design
• Costing test design projects
• How to put the...

Researching Pedagogic Tasks brings together a series of empirical studies into the use of pedagogical tasks for second language learning, with a view to better understanding the structure of tasks, their impact on students, and their use by teachers. The volume starts with an introduction to the background and key issues in the topic area and is then organised into three sections:

• the first section focuses on the language and learning of students on tasks
• the second on the use of tasks in the language classroom
• the third on the use of tasks for...

Genre analysis has a long-established tradition in literature, but interest in the analysis of non-literary genres has been very recent. This book examines the theory of genre analysis, looks at genre analysis in action, taking texts from a wide variety of genres and discusses the use of genre analysis in language teaching and language reform.

Errors in Language Learning and Use is an up-to-date introduction and guide to the study of errors in language, and is also a critical survey of previous work. Error Analysis occupies a central position within Applied Linguistics, and seeks to clarify questions such as Does correctness matter?', Is it more important to speak fluently and write imaginatively or to communicate one's message?'

Carl James provides a scholarly and well-illustrated theoretical and historical background to the field of Error Analysis. The reader is led from definitions of error and related concepts, to...

An account of the development of research and thinking in the field of learner language. Draws on wide-ranging research into contrastive analysis, bilingualism, theoretical linguistics and experimental psychology.

The central concern of this book is the analysis of verbal interaction or discourse. This first six chapters report and evaluate major theoretical advances in the description of discourse. The final chapters demonstrate how the findings of discourse analysis can be used to investigate second-language teaching and first-language acquisition and to analyse literary texts.

This work looks at a variety of the aspects of applied linguistics, ranging from information processing versus inferencing based approaches, to listening-based language learning.

An analysis of the current situation in the teaching of language, this text focuses on interaction and the concept of mutual teacher and pupil education. The use of learning through projects at various educational establishments is discussed.

The material in this book reviews work dating to the vocabulary control movement of the 1930s, and also refers to more recent work on the role of lexis in language learning. The main foundations of lexical semantics described, as are relevant research and pedagogical studies in vocabulary and lexicography.