Scientific Approaches to Literature in Learning Environments is not just about what takes place in literary classrooms. Settings do have a strong influence on student learning both directly and indirectly. These spaces may include the home, the workplace, science centers, libraries, that is, contexts that entail diverse social, physical, psychological, and pedagogical variables that facilitate learning, for example, by grouping desks in specific ways, utilizing audio, visual, and digital technologies. Scientific Approaches to Literature in Learning Environments puts together a series of empirical research studies on the different locations of teaching and learning. These studies represent literary learning environment throughout the world, including Brazil, the USA, China, Canada, Japan and several European countries such as the Netherlands, Ukraine, the UK and Malta. The studies reported describe quantitative and/or qualitative research and cover pre-primary, primary, high school, college, university, and lifelong learning environments. They refresh the enigmatic ambience that often surrounds the teaching and learning that goes on in literary studies and offer transparent, useful and replicable research and practice. Students and teachers alike are encouraged to take them and own them.

Learning environment research has undergone considerable growth in the past thirty years and has now reached a stage of notable diversity and internationalization. Earlier studies often used questionnaires to assess learning environments, but today both qualitative and quantitative approaches are used. Many contemporary studies are a productive combination of these two approaches.This volume brings together prominent educators and researchers from around the world to share their contemporary research on educational learning environments. The chapters provide information on recent trends and developments and effective applications of different methods to improve teaching and learning. The book will be a critical and specialized source that describes recent advances in learning environment studies across all continents. The contributors come from Australia, Belgium, Cyprus, Finland, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, Turkey, Taiwan, Thailand, and the USA.

This handbook reviews efforts to increase the use of empirical methods in studies of the aesthetic and social effects of literary reading. The reviewed research is expansive, including extension of familiar theoretical models to novel domains (e.g., educational settings); enlarging empirical efforts within under-represented research areas (e.g., child development); and broadening the range of applicable quantitative and qualitative methods (e.g., computational stylistics; phenomenological methods). Especially challenging is articulation of the subtle aesthetic and social effects of literary artefacts (e.g., poetry, film). Increasingly, the complexity of these effects is addressed in multi-variate studies, including confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. While each chapter touches upon the historical background of a specific research topic, two chapters address the area’s historical background and guiding philosophical assumptions. Taken together, the material in this volume provides a systematic introduction to the area for early career professionals, while challenging active researchers to develop theoretical frameworks and empirical procedures that match the complexity of their research objectives.

Globalization has triggered an increased need to extend linguistic and cultural awareness into action from our daily encounters to our professional interactions. As our communities continuously grow into linguistically and culturally rich environments, so, too, should our pedagogical and research approaches. Specifically, this volume provides an overview of pedagogies and research methodologies that reflect the urgent need to develop intercultural competence in diverse professions including (but not limited to) law, medicine, business, foreign and second language instruction, and communications. The book re-examines and highlights pedagogical and research approaches to intercultural competence development across disciplines, paving the way to promote collaborative efforts and reassess the critical role of intercultural competence development in distinct fields.

This edited book provides cutting edge contributions from an international array of prominent experts who discuss the relevance of pedagogical stylistics in relation to diverse contexts and areas, including empirical approaches, corpus stylistics, creative writing, literary-linguistic criticism, students as researchers, critical discourse, academic register, text-world pedagogy, cognitive stylistics, classroom discourse, language of literary texts, L1/L2 education, EFL learners, and multimodal stylistics. Intended as a follow-up to Watson and Zyngier (2007), this volume situates the reader by offering a broad assessment of how the field has developed during the past 15 years and where it stands now. By examining both contemporary research and future challenges, it should be regarded as essential reading for all teachers, researchers, scholars, and students interested in understanding language and how to apply stylistics in educational settings. This book will be of interest to students and scholars working in stylistics, cognitive linguistics, language teaching, applied linguistics, literary studies, and materials development.

This volume explores the instructional use of creative writing in secondary and post-secondary contexts to enhance students’ language proficiency and expression in English as a second or foreign language (ESL/EFL). Offering a diverse range of perspectives from scholars and practitioners involved in English language teaching (ELT) globally, International Perspectives on Creative Writing in Second Language Education tackles foundational questions around why fiction and creative writing have been traditionally omitted from ESL and EFL curricula. By drawing on empirical research and first-hand experience, contributors showcase a range of creative genres including autobiography, scriptwriting, poetry, and e-Portfolios, and provide new insight into the benefits of second language creative writing for learners’ language proficiency, emotional expression, and identity development. The volume makes a unique contribution to the field of second language writing by highlighting the breadth of second language users throughout the world, and foregrounding links between identity, learning, and ESL/EFL writing. This insightful volume will be of particular interest to postgraduate students, researchers, and academics in the fields of ESL/EFL learning, composition studies, and second language acquisition (SLA). Those with a focus on the use of creative writing in classrooms more broadly, will also find the book of interest.

This edited book provides cutting edge contributions from an international array of prominent experts who discuss the relevance of pedagogical stylistics in relation to diverse contexts and areas, including empirical approaches, corpus stylistics, creative writing, literary-linguistic criticism, students as researchers, critical discourse, academic register, text-world pedagogy, cognitive stylistics, classroom discourse, language of literary texts, L1/L2 education, EFL learners, and multimodal stylistics. Intended as a follow-up to Watson and Zyngier (2007), this volume situates the reader by offering a broad assessment of how the field has developed during the past 15 years and where it stands now. By examining both contemporary research and future challenges, it should be regarded as essential reading for all teachers, researchers, scholars, and students interested in understanding language and how to apply stylistics in educational settings. This book will be of interest to students and scholars working in stylistics, cognitive linguistics, language teaching, applied linguistics, literary studies, and materials development.