Applied Linguistics and Primary School Teaching: Developing a Language Curriculum

Modern primary teachers must adapt literacy programmes and ensure efficient learning for all. They must also support children with language and literacy difficulties, children learning English as an additional language and possibly teach a modern foreign language. To do this effectively, they need to understand the applied linguistics research that underpins so many different areas of the language and literacy curriculum. This book illustrates the impact of applied linguistics on curriculum frameworks and pedagogy. It captures the range of applied linguistics knowledge that teachers need, and illustrates how this is framed and is used by policy makers, researchers, teacher educators and the other professions who work with teachers in schools. It considers how to effect professional development that works. It is essential reading for primary teachers but also for speech and language therapists, educational psychologists, learning support teachers and all those doing language or literacy research in the primary classroom.

Sue Ellis studied for her first degree, in Theoretical Linguistics and Language Pathology, at the University of Essex and is currently a Reader in Literacy and Language at the University of Strathclyde. Her research, teaching and consultancy interests are in literacy development, teacher education and in how to make literacy policy work in practice. Her current research projects are on children's understanding and use of characterisation in writing, and on literacy policy development in Scotland and Malawi. With Kathy Hall, Usha Goswami, Colin Harrison and Janet Soler, she has co-edited Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Learning to Read (2010).

Elspeth McCartney is Reader in the Speech and Language Therapy Division in the Department of Educational and Professional Studies, University of Strathclyde. She has qualifications in both teaching and in speech and language therapy, and currently teaches and researches in the field of childhood speech and language impairment and therapy. Her major publications are in language interventions for children with specific language impairment and in teacher-therapist co-professional working practices and she has had many research grants on these topics. She is a fellow of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.