Reading Room
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The reading room is updated every month so you have access to the latest journal articles and chapters taken from Cambridge's most recent publications.
Journal articles
The following articles are provided from Cambridge Journals Online.
'Managing innovation in English language education' (PDF)
Alan Waters
Language Teaching, Volume 42, Issue 4, Oct 2009, pp421–458
Innovation in English language education (ELE) has become a major 'growth area' in recent years. At the same time, an ELE innovation management literature has also developed, based on insights from innovation theory and their application, both from outside and within ELE, and concerned with attempting to critically evaluate and inform ELE innovation practice. Thus, using a well-established three-part framework for distinguishing the main stages involved in innovation project management, this review describes and discusses the main features of this body of work. After defining terms and clarifying its scope, it considers what is said about the innovation 'initiation' phase, in terms of innovation causes, characteristics and contexts. It then examines conceptualisations of the innovation 'implementation' stage, by distinguishing main overall approaches, frameworks for identifying and configuring roles, underlying psychological processes, and the use of evaluation techniques. Lastly, the literature relating to innovation 'institutionalisation' stage is analysed. The article concludes by identifying overall trends and areas for further development. In particular, it is argued that ELE innovation work needs to become more informed by many of the concepts and procedures which the ELE innovation management literature contains.
'Vocabulary knowledge and advanced listening comprehension in English as a foreign language' (PDF)
Lars Stenius Stæhr
Studies in Second Language Acquisition, , Volume 31, Issue 04, Dec 2009, pp577–607
This article presents an empirical study that investigates the role of vocabulary knowledge in listening comprehension with 115 advanced Danish learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). The dimensions of depth and breadth of vocabulary knowledge (measured by the Vocabulary Levels Test and the Word Associates Test) were found to be significantly correlated with listening comprehension (measured by a listening test from the Cambridge certificate of proficiency in English) and could predict half of the variance in the listening scores. This study thus provides empirical evidence that vocabulary knowledge is an important factor for successful listening comprehension in EFL. Furthermore, the results suggest that a lexical coverage of 98% is needed for coping with the spoken texts that constitute the listening test. This coverage figure is consistent with findings from reading research.
'Usage-based vs. rule-based learning: the acquisition of word order in wh-questions in English and Norwegian' (PDF)
Marit Westergaard
Journal of Child Language, Volume 36, Issue 05, Nov 2009, pp1023–1051
This paper discusses different approaches to language acquisition in relation to children's acquisition of word order in wh-questions in English and Norwegian. While generative models assert that children set major word order parameters and thus acquire a rule of subject–auxiliary inversion or generalized verb second (V2) at an early stage, some constructivist work argues that English-speaking children are simply reproducing frequent wh-word+auxiliary combinations in the input. The paper questions both approaches, re-evaluates some previous work, and provides some further data, concluding that the acquisition of wh-questions must be the result of a rule-based process. Based on variation in adult grammars, a cue-based model to language acquisition is presented, according to which children are sensitive to minor cues in the input, called micro-cues. V2 is not considered to be one major parameter, but several smaller-scale cues, which are responsible for children's lack of syntactic (over-)generalization in the acquisition process.
Book chapters
Vocabulary and reading comprehension (PDF)
William Grabe
(Chapter 13 of Reading in a Second Language, 2009)
'… a coherent approach to direct vocabulary learning must combine some understanding of how students are likely to learn words as a result of direct instruction, a systematic approach to appropriate word selection, many opportunities for students to practice and use the words being learned, and a vocabulary-rich environment in the classroom.'
The production of speech sounds (PDF)
Peter Roach
(Chapter 2 of English Phonetics and Phonology, 4th edition, 2009)
This chapter discusses how speech sounds are produced. Diagrams show the different parts of the mouth used for speech, how the tongue moves to produce particular sounds, and the position of vowels in the mouth. Written exercises are included at the end of the chapter.