About this Item
165 pp., viii. Same date; NAP. No jacket. Navy cloth with brilliant copper lettering on spine. 27 pp. of 38 pp. of Lecture I, "Realism Versus Formalism" have varying amounts of light pencil underlining, which may easily be erased, if wished. These are the markings of the book's owner, Wilga M. Rivers, and have been left in place for their possible usefulness and historical value, else artifact is unqualifiedly Fine. [Sharp corners (NO bumps or curls); NO cracks to spine]. On upper right ffep, we find, in Rivers' hand, "W.M. Rivers / Dept of Modern Languages / Monash University / Clayton . Vic", '1964' (year her first book was published). From Wikipedia: "Wilga Marie Rivers was born on April 13, 1919, in Melbourne, Australia. She remained in her native country for the early years of her education and obtained a B.A. honors degree from the University of Melbourne in 1939. An M.A. from the same university followed in 1949. Rivers would eventually come to the United States to complete her graduate work and earn a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1962. Twelve years later she joined the Harvard faculty as a full professor in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, the first woman to hold that title. At the time of her appointment, Rivers had already established herself as an international authority on language learning and teaching, having taken her field beyond the behaviorist methodology of the 1960s and offered in its stead a new psycholinguistic approach to foreign language pedagogy. Throughout her career she would work tirelessly to make contributions to the field of applied linguistics and to the professionalization of language teachers at every level. / Her first book, The Psychologist and the Foreign-Language Teacher, published in 1964, won notice as a result of its exploration of the relationship between the psychological processes of language acquisition and the rationale on which a specific methodology is based. While acknowledging the necessity of ?making foreign language responses automatic at the manipulative level,? Rivers challenges the basic assumptions of the audio-lingual method (ALM) prevalent at the time and emphasizes the emotional, or affective, component of foreign language learning as well as the need to make material meaningful. Here, as in later books, Rivers focuses on the individual learner, criticizing ALM?s assumption that all students learn in the same way and that it is possible to learn a foreign language through repetition and drill without the expression of personal meaning. Her last chapter, consisting of recommendations for the teacher, represents a constant in Rivers? writing: the desire to combine scholarly research and practical application in order to ensure that classroom practices rest on a sound theoretical foundation. . . Teaching Foreign-Language Skills, perhaps Rivers? most important contribution to the field of applied linguistics, was published in 1968 and subsequently translated into Japanese, Romanian, and Portuguese. In addition, special editions were prepared for use by teachers in India, Pakistan, and Southeast Asia. A later revision completed in 1981 was also translated into Japanese. . . She wrote approximately eighty articles on language teaching and learning and was the author, co-author, or editor of fifteen books, including a series of ?practical guides? for the teaching of English, French, German, Hebrew, and Spanish. She was an invited or keynote speaker in over forty countries, even long after her retirement. Active in professional organizations, notably as the first president of the American Association for Applied Linguistics, Rivers received many prizes, served on a variety of advisory councils, consulted for both the Canadian and United States government, and was awarded an honorary doctorate by Middlebury.".
Seller Inventory # 002039
Contact seller
Report this item
