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Multilingualism and Applied Comparative Linguistics: Pedagogical Perspectives
Editor: Frank Boers, Jeroen Darquennes and Rita Temmerman
Date Of Publication: Nov 2007
Isbn13: 9781847183293
Isbn: 1-84718-329-8
In February 2006 the first international conference on Multilingualism and Applied Comparative Linguistics (MACL) was held in Brussels, Belgium. The aim of the MACL conference was to bring together scholars from various branches of applied linguistics with a shared interest in cross-linguistic and cross-cultural communication. The conference thus fostered an exchange of knowledge and expertise among researchers from various disciplines, including educational linguistics, cultural linguistics, terminography, translation studies and studies of specialised languages.

The present book is the first of two volumes containing a selection from the approximately 120 papers that were presented at that three-day event.

Frank Boers teaches EFL and applied linguistics at the Erasmus University College Brussels, where he co-ordinates the Centre for Foreign Language Teaching. His research interests include the application of cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics and cultural linguistics to the teaching of vocabulary and phraseology. He has published in journals such as Applied Linguistics, System and Language Teaching Research as well as in collective volumes published by John Benjamins, Mouton de Gruyter and Cambridge University Press.

Jeroen Darquennes is a postdoctoral research fellow of the Flemish Fund for Scientific Research and a member of the Research Centre on Multilingualism of the Catholic University of Brussel. His main research interests lie in the domain of sociolinguistics and contact linguistics. His work (for example on the status of German in Belgium) has appeared in several collective volumes (published, for example, by Peter Lang) and in journals such as Annual Review of Applied Linguistics.

Rita Temmerman teaches translation studies and terminology theory at the Erasmus University College Brussels, where she co-ordinates the Centrum voor Vaktaal en Communicatie, a research centre in applied sociocognitive terminology.

Her wider research interests include translation, terminology, knowledge management,

multilingualism and cross-cultural communication. She has published a monograph with John Benjamins and multiple articles in collective volumes and journals such as Terminology.

"Multilingualism and applied comparative linguistics is an impressive collection of articles, all based on original research, that investigate key and current issues in applied linguistics. Its main focus is on multilingualism and intereactions between speakers of different languages, but it also branches out into the areas of translation and interpreting, and the relationship between language and culture. It does all of this whilst maintaining a strong overall coherence. It is thus a 'must read' for anyone working in the areas of applied linguistics, translation studies, or TESOL.”

—Dr Jeannette Littlemore, Senior Lecturer, Centre for English Language Studies, University of Birmingham

“This is an unusually solid and interesting multi-author collection of papers – a number of which, I venture to say, will be widely cited in years to come. Two principle strands of thematic kinship among the contributions are indicated by the title. Additionally, all eleven chapters have clear and direct bearing on foreign language teaching with all but the first presenting new experimental findings.

One attractive feature of the collection is that it asks, and answers, a wide variety of pertinent questions, some well off the beaten track. For example:

*Is English more idiomatic than Spanish? If not, a lexical approach should be applicable to Spanish too. (Hélène Stengers)

*Because it has traditionally been aimed at bilinguals, interpreting training focuses on such matters as memory training and includes no ostensible language teaching. But do classic methods of interpreting training work as language teaching activities and if so, in what respects and why? (Alessandro Zannirato)

*Does increased use of lexical chunks really result in learners being perceived as more proficient? (June Eyckmans)

*Are teachers of L2 for the specific purposes of business and economics justified in thinking that L2 technical terms require relatively little attention (compared to sub-technical terms) on account of such factors as greater transparency? (Lieve Vangehuchten)

*What does controlled experimentation say about the relative effectiveness of teaching grammar with consistent, explicit reference to the mother tongue? (Michal B. Paradowski)”

—Seth Lindstromberg, Hilderstone College, Broadstairs, kent

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