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8 books match the query 'Language Experience Approach'

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Doing Difference Differently

Chinese International Students’ Literacy Practices and Affordances

Zhaozhe Wang

Utah State University Press, 2024

Doing Difference Differently ethnographically recounts the stories of four Chinese international students navigating the complex socio-academic environment of a North American institution for higher education. Zhaozhe Wang traces the ecologically situated and distributed literacy practices of these individuals across rhetorical contexts, both on and off campus, and reconstructs the digitally networked, spatiotemporally emerging, rhetorically potent, and ecologically afforded literacy worlds of Chinese international students.

Doing Difference Differently provides an in-depth, nuanced understanding of the multifaceted literate lives of this often-marginalized cultural group, highlighting their diverse aspirations, personas, communities, challenges, and strategies. The book reconceptualizes the linguistic and cultural differences of Chinese international students as active processes of embracing, performing, resisting, negotiating, and redefining the identities that institutions impose on them through everyday literacy practices. Wang offers an analytical heuristic for researchers and educators to better understand these students’ backgrounds and to more effectively and ethically support and advocate for them. This case study critically engages broad and interconnected concepts that are essential to educators’ collective understanding of Generation Z students brought up in cultural and educational contexts outside of the European-American sphere.

This book appeals to scholars, researchers, teachers, and administrators working in North American higher education and English-speaking countries, particularly those in the fields of writing studies, second language studies, applied linguistics, multilingual education, literacy studies, and international education. Educators across disciplines seeking to better understand the growing population of Chinese international students in North America will likewise benefit.

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Grounded in Nevada

A Place-Based Literary Approach to English Language Learning

Lee Olsen

University of Nevada Press, 2027

Successfully learning English entails engaging with the places and communities around you. Grounded in Nevada brings real-world connections to students’ learning experience. Through stories set in the Silver State, and excerpts from Nevada writers, they will strengthen their reading, writing, speaking, and grammar skills while exploring the state’s histories and cultures. Each chapter encourages learners to connect their own experiences to what they read, allowing them to build confidence, foster agency, and internalize a deeper sense of belonging.

Chapters are organized into four parts: fictional readings about life in Nevada; published fiction and nonfiction by Nevada authors; realistic conversations to support speaking and listening practice; and grammar review and test-preparation activities. Every selection is paired with questions and prompts that invite reflection and discussion. An interactive grammar review appendix provides additional support as students continue developing their English skills and finding their place within Nevada’s communities.

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Hebrew Infusion

Language and Community at American Jewish Summer Camps

Sarah Bunin Benor, Jonathan B. Krasner, and Sharon Avni

Rutgers University Press, 2019

Winner of the 2020 National Jewish Book Award in Education and Jewish Identity

Each summer, tens of thousands of American Jews attend residential camps, where they may see Hebrew signs, sing and dance to Hebrew songs, and hear a camp-specific hybrid language register called Camp Hebraized English, as in: “Let’s hear some ruach (spirit) in this chadar ochel (dining hall)!” Using historical and sociolinguistic methods, this book explains how camp directors and staff came to infuse Hebrew in creative ways and how their rationales and practices have evolved from the early 20th century to today. Some Jewish leaders worry that Camp Hebraized English impedes Hebrew acquisition, while others recognize its power to strengthen campers’ bonds with Israel, Judaism, and the Jewish people. Hebrew Infusion explores these conflicting ideologies, showing how hybrid language can serve a formative role in fostering religious, diasporic communities. The insightful analysis and engaging descriptions of camp life will appeal to anyone interested in language, education, or American Jewish culture.

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How To Teach Your Children the Latin of the Church

Jack Clark

Catholic University of America Press, 2027

Mark Clark and Jack Clark wrote How To Teach Your Children the Latin of the Church based on their experience teaching and learning Latin. They wanted to teach and to learn Latin well enough to speak, read, and write it, and close friends of theirs, notably David Morgan and Jim Dobreff, helped them learn and learn how. The main principles are simple: learn by sounds whenever possible; and learn from things that are most familiar first. All humans speak mainly using figurative language by the time they're teenagers and even well before, but young children first learn primitive significations, the building blocks of all languages and language learning. The authors thought about how to do this in Latin for others without pointing out objects around the house and the yard and the town, and using the biblical text, and especially well-known narratives, occurred to both as the best and simplest way to create that situation. Anyone using this book will want to read and imitate everything aloud, from the biblical excerpts in the vocabulary lists to the exercises to the stories themselves. Most will know the stories in their native tongues, and once readers work the Latin in this book into their senses, from their ears to their mouths etc., making sure not to think in English, it won't be long until the brain does what it does best, which is to think in whatever language it's absorbing.

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Learning American Sign Language in High School

Motivation, Strategies, and Achievement

Russell S. Rosen

Gallaudet University Press, 2015

Reflecting the exponential growth of college courses offering American Sign Language (ASL) as a foreign language, high schools have followed suit with significant increases in ASL classes during the past two decades. Despite this trend, high school ASL teachers and program administrators possess no concrete information on why students take ASL for foreign language credit, how they learn new signs and grammar, and how different learning techniques determines their achievement in ASL. This new book addresses these issues to better prepare high schools in their recruitment and education of new ASL students.

Author Russell S. Rosen begins with the history of ASL as a foreign language in high schools, including debates about the foreign language status of ASL, the situation of deaf and hard of hearing students in classes, and governmental recognition of ASL as a language. Based on his study of five high school ASL programs, he defines the factors that motivate students, including community and culture, and analyzes strategies for promoting language processing and learning. Learning American Sign Language in High School provides strategies for teaching ASL as a second language to students with learning disabilities as well. Its thorough approach ensures the best opportunity for high school students to attain high levels of achievement in learning ASL.

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Playing With Stories

Story crafting for storytellers, writers, teachers and other imaginative thinkers

Kevin D. Cordi, Ph.D.

Parkhurst Brothers, Inc., 2014

It has not been easy to value play. Mainstream culture urges us to rush and finish what we are working on to quickly advance to the next task at hand. Too often we must punch our time clock forward without much consideration. As the minutes and hours move, we indirectly communicate both to ourselves and the world no time remains to play; we must work.

Despite that the world around me does not value play, in my creative life, play is necessary. In fact, I have discovered it is the real work I do as an artist and teacher. As a storyteller, writer, teacher, and imaginative thinker, it is play that has produced the most desired results in my life, in my work, and especially, in my creativity. It is in play that we experience who we are and we begin to extend our choices. Play is not consciously prepared; discovery that happens in the moment. It invites reflection. In fact, Plato once shared, “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.”

In this book, you will discover new ways to work with your story craft and find new story direction using play. Indeed, play is a meaningful way to create and learn.

In both childhood and adult play, the imagination plays a central role in the meaning making process. Although there are many types of play: school-based, recess, sports, this work is rooted in play inviting the writer, storyteller, or imaginative thinker to make choices as they work to create meaning in their work.

I will share how collaborative play can increase your choices when making a story. You will find not only exercises to build your story making and telling skills, but pedagogy of practice to use when called to create story.

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Practical Pronunciation

Pronunciation Strategies in Practice

DJ Kaiser

University of Michigan Press, 2026

Practical Pronunciation offers an easy-to-follow road map for English learners to incorporate pronunciation into their everyday and professional speaking. With more than two decades of practice and expertise in teaching advanced English pronunciation and public speaking skills, DJ Kaiser guides readers through a series of hands-on strategies that bring pronunciation practice to life. Carefully ordered lessons cover segmentals, word stress, phrase rhythm and melody, the phrase focus syllable, and intonation. Balancing more advanced topics in pronunciation (like stress on compound nouns, intonation on various question types, and using gestures to bring focus to relevant content) with accessible language and practical strategies makes reaching pronunciation goals more attainable. The book includes access to video content and more than 4.5 hours of audio content. Practical Pronunciation is perfect for classroom instruction, small-group tutorials, and one-on-one tutoring sessions, or as a self-study tool for advanced independent learners.

CEFR Level: C1

Key Features

A series of 210 audio recordings provides opportunities for learners to listen for key aspects of pronunciation and practice items from the book on their own.
Twenty-nine videos provide short explanations and visual demonstrations of many of the strategies included throughout the book.
Recommendations on ways to integrate digital tools into pronunciation exploration and practice provide learners and teachers with multiple ways to customize pronunciation practice to meet varied professional speaking contexts, academic goals, and personal interests.
Practice items and exercises incorporate higher-frequency words from the Corpus of Contemporary American English.
A glossary and several quick-reference charts make it easy to look up or clarify key terms and linguistic terminology or to visually review consonant and vowel charts.

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