| dc.description.abstract | B. Spolsky’s General Introduction: The Field of Educational Linguistics is the first part of Introduction to the
Field, an introductory chapter of edited by the author Concise Encyclopedia of Educational Linguistics (Elsevier
1999) in which some basic principles of the new branch of linguistics are presented.
Spolsky starts with defining the scope of educational linguistics emphasizing its connections with applied
linguistics, educational psychology, and educational sociology. The scope - as the author states himself - is
“best defined as the intersection of language and education” and the task of both the new field and the
encyclopaedia is to be helpful in learning mother tongue as well as foreign languages. Described by Spolsky
taxonomy of educational linguistics includes, apart from the introduction, the social context (society, language
education policy, literacy and oracy, the language gap between home and school), the individual learner (language
acquisition, challenged learners, second language processing), the school context (school and classroom,
dictionaries, electronic age), teaching language (national curricula, grammar, reading, spelling, and writing in
the mother tongue teaching), teaching additional languages (second and foreign language learning, acquisition,
and pedagogy), language testing and the profession (journals, associations, research centres).
Answering the question of a theory of educational linguistics, Spolsky considers the role of the field in
spelling out the nature of terms and processes connected with language and education as well as in consolidating
this knowledge and “clarifying the gaps that need further study”. | en_EN |
