There has been a significant increase in the number of English speakers globally, with the majority of them being non-native speakers who rely on diverse varieties of the language. Throughout its history, English has been disseminated through a number of processes, ranging from colonialism to globalisation. This has ultimately resulted in the formation of various relationships between English and target communities. English has also spread to countries where Muslims constitute the majority of the population. As religious teachings are embedded in local or national cultures, and thus result in non-homogeneous Islamic communities across the globe, it is a frequently used oversimplification to conclude that English consistently stands in opposition to Islam in every Islamic society. Given such misperceptions, studies directed towards perceptions of English in Indonesia, the fourth most populated country and the largest Muslim community in the world, are particularly important. This book examines a variety of perceptions of English in this context, focusing on staff and students at universities in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Five research questions were used as the basis for conducting this study, which analyse the themes of English and its acceptance in Indonesia; English at the tertiary level; the roles of English; English in relation to identity; and the perception of World Englishes. Employing a mixed-methods approach, the study was carried out at nine public and private universities with differing religious viewpoints – namely, secular, Catholic, and Islamic. There are five different groups of participants for individual interviews and questionnaire surveys: students, English language lecturers, non-English lecturers, and leaders at each of the nine universities. The results reveal that English is viewed as a tool and asset for advancing knowledge, facilitating international communication, gaining global competitiveness, and improving employment opportunities. However, perceived tensions between English and Indonesian constantly occur throughout all facets of the study. Even though Indonesian people’s “repository of cultural identity” (Tan and Rubdy, 2008, p. 5) is located within local languages rather than in Indonesian as the national language, the Indonesian language actually unites them as one people and differentiates them from people of other nations. This suggests a demand for a “contemporary global linguistic ecology” (Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas, 1999, p. 20). In such ecology, English would keep developing in a way that does not impact negatively on the national language. Indeed, such demand for a balance between English and Indonesian is politically desirable.

Writing is one of four skills in English that have to be mastered by foreign language learners. In the English language, writing can be the most difficult skill because of how writers have to apply their ideas to produce good writing. Not only that, but to produce good writing we also have to have good grammar skills so that our writing will be correct.

Evidentiality, the linguistic encoding of a speaker's or writer's evidence for an asserted proposition, has begun to receive serious attention from linguists only in the last quarter century. Much of this attention has focused on languages that encode evidentiality in the grammar, while much less interest has been shown in languages that express evidentiality through means other than inflectional morphology. In English and German, for instance, the verbs of perception - those verbs denoting sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste - are prime carriers of evidential meaning. This study surveys the most prominent of the perception verbs in English and German across all five sensory modalities and accounts for the range of evidential meanings by examining the general polysemy found among perception verbs, as well as the specific complementation patterns in which these verbs occur.

English Pronunciation for Speakers of Spanish fills a gaping hole in the market for books on English phonetics and pronunciation because it not only combines theoretical issues and applications to practice, but it also adopts a contrastive English-Spanish approach to better suit the needs of Spanish-speaking learners of English (SSLE), enabling them to build gradually on the knowledge gained in each chapter. The book covers the key concepts of English phonetics and phonology in seven chapters written in an accessible and engaging style: 1. Phonetics and Phonology 2. The Production and Classification of Speech Sounds 3. Vowels and Glides 4. Consonants 5. Segment Dynamics: Aspects of Connected Speech 6. Beyond the Segment: Stress and Intonation 7. Predicting Pronunciation from Spelling (and vice versa) Features: in-text audio illustrations, as well as over a hundred written and audio exercises with corresponding keys and different kinds of artwork (Tables, Figures, illustrations, spectrograms, etc.) classic readings in the discipline in the Further Reading section of each chapter highlights the phonetic contrasts and specific cues that are more important to aid comprehension in English and offers guidelines on "correct" pronunciation habits to help SSLE sound as close as possible to native English The book's companion website, EPSS Multimedia Lab, can be used on computers, smartphones and tablets, and is useful for the self-taught student and the busy lecturer alike. The website of the EPSS Multimedia lab can be accessed here: http://www.usc.gal/multimlab/ Features of the website: a complete sound bank defining and illustrating the sounds of English RP as compared with those of Peninsular Spanish written definitions and animated diagrams, videos and original recordings (by native speakers of English and Spanish) showing the articulation of each sound, alongside its most common spellings, as well as pronunciation practice for individual words and whole sentences a comprehensive selection of over a hundred written and audio exercises (with their keys) for practice both at home or in the language lab audio files corresponding to the audio illustrations given in the written book a repository of useful resources by topics and a list of online glossaries and pronunciation dictionaries

This edited collection explores the processes of second language learning and teaching from a psycholinguistic perspective. Authored by leading experts in the field, the book includes studies focusing on theoretical, empirical and practical aspects of second and foreign language education. Part One offers contributions devoted to a range of learner-related factors, dealing with affective and cognitive variables, the process of reading and the acquisition of lexis. Part Two brings together papers related to teacher awareness of second language instruction that focus on conversational styles, fostering intercultural pragmatics, teacher job satisfaction, the development of instructional materials and challenges of teacher training in different contexts. It is of interest to researchers as well as graduate and postgraduate students seeking fresh inspirations for their own empirical investigations of the ways in which second and foreign languages are taught and learned.

This volume bridges the gap between theory and practice by bringing together well-known and new authors to discuss a topic of mutual interest to second language researchers and teachers alike: input. Reader-friendly chapters offer a range of existing and new perspectives on input in morphology, syntax, phonetics and phonology.

This volume provides a state-of-the-art overview of the relationship between language and cognition with a focus on bilinguals, bringing together contributions from international leading figures in various disciplines . It is essential reading for researchers and postgraduate students with an interest in language and cognition, or in bilingualism and second languages.