Reading Room
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The reading room is updated every month so you have access to the latest journal articles, exclusive author articles and chapters taken from Cambridge's most recent publications.
Author articles
What is Applied Linguistics? (PDF)
Anne Burns, Wini Davies, Zoltán Dörnyei, Phil Durrant, Juliane House, Richard Hudson, Susan Hunston, Andy Kirkpatrick, Dawn Knight, Jack C. Richards
Applied linguistics is notoriously hard to define. What sets it apart from other areas of linguistics? How has it evolved over the years? What do applied linguists do?
We asked ten leading and up-and-coming academics to give us their answer to the question: 'What is applied linguistics?' Below are their responses. Take a look at them and then add to the debate by sending us your definition.
Communicative Language Teaching Today (PDF)
Jack C. Richards, 2006
This article examines the methodology known as communicative language teaching, or CLT, and explore the assumptions it is based on, its origins and evolution since it was first proposed in the 1970s, and how it has influenced approaches to language teaching today.
Book chapters
Models of World Englishes (PDF)
Andy Kirkpatrick
(Chapter 3 of World Englishes, Implications for international communication and English language teaching, 2007)
'In this chapter I shall first describe and discuss the classifications or models of World Englishes that have been proposed by certain scholars… I shall then summarise the stages through which a new variety may proceed on its way to becoming an established variety…Finally, I shall consider the ideological and political standpoints taken by different scholars, with a particular emphasis on the debate over whether the speakers themselves choose to use English or whether they have that choice thrust upon them…'
Multiple Intelligences (PDF)
Jack C. Richards and Theodore S. Rogers
(Chapter 10 of Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching, second edition, 2001)
'Multiple Intelligences (MI) refers to a learner-based philosophy that characterizes human intelligence as having multiple dimensions that must be acknowledged and developed in education. Traditional IQ or intelligence tests are based on a test called the Stanford-Binet, founded on the idea that intelligence is a single, unchanged, inborn capacity. However, traditional IQ tests, while still given to most schoolchildren, are increasingly being challenged by the MI movement…'