This volume is the first of a series contributing to the academic study of Language Arts, as an English-language teaching paradigm. Language Arts has been widely used in native English-speaking countries including Australia and New Zealand. Its recent adoption into the second-language teaching curriculum in Hong Kong, as well as similar initiatives within secondary and tertiary education in mainland China, enhances its interest to scholars studying second-language teaching and learning in Asian contexts. This book offers many papers and discussions of interest to teachers, language professionals, scholars and administrators. Its chapters explore current topics in Language Arts research including trends in the rapprochment of stylistics and linguistics, teaching approaches and learning outcomes. At the same time, they offer diverse theoretical and methodological aproaches, of interest to the practitioner and policy-maker as well as the researcher. The value of this volume lies particularly in strengthening the theoretical and methodological foundations of Language Arts. The use of literature and the arts in humanist education has a long history within Europe, being traditionally appreciated for its ability to transform leaders, instill finer sensibilities and question social ills. In its postcolonial incarnations, as the traditional subject areas were informed by critical and linguistic theories, language arts subject areas were less often used, as they were understood to offer opportunities to analyse their functions as apology for leaders, coopting the young, and pacifying dissent but less often used to teach second language skills. Language Arts curricula arising since the 1980s have increasingly embraced authentic voices, styles and genres. Contemporary Language Arts curricula use literature to teach reading-based and communication skills, in conjunction with critical and creative thinking. The movement of English-language education beyond native English shores has placed Language Arts into a World Englishes frame, and therefore its curricula have included the teaching ethics, civics and intercultural sensitivity. The explosion of media and digital communications of the 1990s led to the adoption of media literacy as a crucial Language Arts skill. As digital innovations continue to impact the teaching of English, Language Arts has adopted multiliteracies. These developments are represented in the papers included in this volume.

This volume is the second of a series deepening the research understanding and academic study of Language Arts, as an English-language teaching paradigm. Previously used extensively in native-speaking countries, Language Arts has been taken up in the past decade in many parts of Asia. Language Arts uses intrinsically motivating materials such as literature, drama and popular culture to help students develop mastery of written and spoken language and text-types. In recent years, Language Arts has embraced media and multiliteracies, as well as critical and creative thinking, intercultural sensitivity, civics and ethics. This volume offers a breadth of topics, which embody methodologically sophisticated and contemporary language arts research. These include multimodal analysis, virtual environments, the use of comics, anime and film in second language teaching, and learners’ experiences of drama and literary tourism. The use of literature and the arts in humanist education has a long history within Europe. It was traditionally appreciated for its ability to instil ethics and finer sensibilities and teach leadership. But the traditional program was marred by its function in inculcating and preserving elitist, high-culture voices, texts and values. The post-colonial incarnation of Language Arts has been informed by critical and linguistic theory, helping it to embrace a popular scope, and include a wide array of authentic social and media texts. The movement of English-language teaching beyond native-speaker shores has given rise to a vibrant variety of World Englishes, whose literary and media works are now represented within Language Arts. The explosion of media over the past few decades has given rise to an increasing array of media to use in language teaching. These trends invite scholarly analysis, and this is clearly reflected in the chapters in this volume. Linguistics has long had a connection to, and a natural role to play in, analysing the creative verbal and visual arts. As a paradigm, Language Arts now takes an inclusive view of the continuum of spoken, written and performed languages and texts. Cutting edge Language Arts research is now also supported through the new journal Language Arts and Linguistics (Taylor and Francis).

A resource ideal for students as well as general readers, this two-volume encyclopedia examines the diversity of the Asian American and Pacific Islander spiritual experience. Despite constituting a fairly small proportion of the U.S. population—roughly 5 percent—Asian Americans are a widely diverse group with equally heterogeneous religious beliefs and traditions. This encyclopedia provides a single source for authoritative information on the Asian American and Pacific Islander religious experience, addressing South Asian Americans, such as Indian Americans and Pakistani Americans; East Asian Americans, including Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, and Korean Americans; and Southeast Asian Americans, whose ethnicities include Filipino Americans, Thai Americans, and Vietnamese Americans. Pacific Islanders include Hawaiians, Samoans, Marshallese, Tongan, and Chamorro. The coverage includes not only traditional eastern belief systems and traditions such as Buddhism, Confucianism, and Hinduism as well as Micronesian and Polynesian religious traditions in the United States, but also the culture and religious rituals of Asian American Christians.

Turkmenistan is a Central Asian country bordered by Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Iran, and Afghanistan. It became an independent country in 1991 after the Soviet Union dissolved. The country's population is predominantly Muslim and its official language is Turkmen. Turkmenistan's economy is heavily dependent on its vast natural gas reserves, which rank fourth in the world. The government tightly controls its natural resources and foreign investment, leading to a lack of economic diversification and limited opportunities for private businesses. The country has been criticized for its lack of political and religious freedoms and its government's authoritarian policies. Despite these issues, Turkmenistan has a rich cultural history, including unique traditions of carpet weaving, music, and crafts.

The 25 chapters contained in this book were all written by scholars working in the field of applied linguistics and English language teaching in various East Asian contexts. East Asia is large and diverse in terms of socio-economic, linguistic, and ethnic parameters. Statistics alone cannot give a clear understanding of what goes on in rural and urban universities and what challenges English language teachers and learners face in those contexts. To understand this wide gamut of issues in English language teaching in East Asia is thus a very large undertaking. The book addresses some of these issues, arranging its 25 chapters into five sections: namely, Assessing Language Performance; Teaching English Writing; Learner Autonomy; Corpus and Discourse Research; and Learning English in East Asian Contexts. Many of the chapters in this volume concern familiar topics such as linking assessment to teaching, learning and curriculum; conducting assessment validation research; examining meta-cognitive strategies; investigating teaching and learning English for academic purposes; and profiling prevailing word lists for language learners. Other chapters are on novel or lesser known topics such as non-verbal delivery in speaking assessment; the use of visualization as a reading strategy; learner strategies in a Facebook corpus; effects of discourse signaling cues and rate of speech; and an ontogenetic analysis of college English textbooks. Collectively, these chapters showcase English language learning, teaching, and assessing in a range of contexts using a variety of methods and techniques to deal with issues relevant to East Asian teachers, learners and researchers.