To Advanced Proficiency and Beyond

Book excerpt: Due to the pressures of globalization, American society increasingly needs citizens who can carry out Superior level functions in languages other than English. Instructors, researchers, and students of second language acquisition seek scholarly resources to help satisfy this demand. In this volume, leading experts in second language acquisition and language planning supply cutting-edge research on working memory and cognition and empirical studies of effective teaching. The theoretical and empirical work in these pages is complemented by descriptions of successful pedagogical practices that take students from the Advanced to the Superior levels and beyond. With examples ranging across a number of languages, including Russian, Chinese, and Arabic, the volume will serve a broad audience. This practical handbook will help seasoned instructors improve outcomes, while it can also be used for training new instructors in methods courses.