This book provides comprehensive information on the geography, history, wildlife, governmental structure, economy, cultural diversity, peoples, religion, and culture of Taiwan. All books of the critically-acclaimed Cultures of the World® series ensure an immersive experience by offering vibrant photographs with descriptive nonfiction narratives, and interactive activities such as creating an authentic traditional dish from an easy-to-follow recipe. Copious maps and detailed timelines present the past and present of the country, while exploration of the art and architecture help your readers to understand why diversity is the spice of Life.
A fascinating description of a global language, A Grammar of Mandarin combines broad perspectives with illuminating depth. Crammed with examples from everyday conversations, it aims to let the language speak for itself. The book opens with an overview of the language situation and a thorough account of Mandarin speech sounds. Nine core chapters explore syntactic, morphological and lexical dimensions. A final chapter traces the Chinese character script from oracle-bone inscriptions to today’s digital pens. This work will cater to language learners and linguistic specialists alike. Easy reference is provided by more than eighty tables, figures, appendices, and a glossary. The main text is enriched by sections in finer print, offering further analysis and reflection. Example sentences are fully glossed, translated, and explained from diverse angles, with a keen eye for recent linguistic change. This grammar, in short, reveals a Mandarin language in full swing.
The website provides a guide to better understanding of the Chinese language, its writing and the romanization. Site contents: (1) Home; (2) Readings; (3) Rules for using pinyin; (4) Romanization tools: pinyin and Unicode; (5) Romanization systems, Non-romanization systems; (6) News; (7) Links; and (8) Contact.
A Guide to Chinese Medicine on the Internet frees readers from having to sift through countless websites to find up-to-date, high quality, reliable information on all types of Chinese medicine. This handy resource provides an introduction to the terms and philosophies of Chinese medicine in addition to an extensive categorized listing of online sites related to Chinese culture and medicine, complete with a brief description of each site’s content. Guidelines are provided for searching, cataloging, and evaluating websites concerned with Chinese medicine, based on the author’s research and personal experience as a practitioner and user of Chinese medicines.
This book investigates inherent, structural differences in the Chinese and English writing systems which predispose learners from childhood to develop specific literacy-learning strategies, which can impair later efforts at learning foreign language literacy if the foreign language script varies significantly from the native language script. It compares educational practices and philosophies in Chinese and English-speaking classrooms, and examines the psychological underpinnings of these literacy learning strategies. This book presents psychometric testing of adult reading strategy defaults and examines case study data, revealing that Chinese students are susceptible to misapplying Chinese character-level processing strategies to English word identification tasks, which decreases reading efficiency, and ultimately can lead to learning failure. Finally, a new educational framework is proposed for teaching beginning language-specific word identification and literacy-learning skills to learners whose first language script varies significantly from that of the target language.
Touches of History represents a groundbreaking attempt to return to a study of “May Fourth” that is solidly grounded in historical fact. Favouring smaller stories over grand narratives, concentrating on unknown, marginal materials rather than familiar key documents, and highlighting “May Fourth”’s indebtedness to the cultural debates of the preceding late Qing period, Chen Pingyuan reconstructs part of the actual historical scenery, demonstrating the great variety of ideas expressed during those tumultuous decades.
This collection of articles begins with an overview of the Reviews from past decades, then goes on to describe the current practices, and foretells the possible future developments. This is followed by a discussion of the use of ICT and surveys on several professional aspects of teaching, including teachers’ training needs and perception of student difficulties, assessment literacy, familiarity and use of language teaching strategies, as well as perceived social status and job satisfaction. The book ends with an extensive discussion of bilingualism and code-switching as well as the teaching of Chinese culture in Singapore schools. The comprehensive coverage provides a milestone in Chinese Language teaching in the multi-lingual context of Singapore.
"DeFrancis's book is first rate. It entertains. It teaches. It demystifies. It counteracts popular ignorance as well as sophisticated (cocktail party) ignorance. Who could ask for anything more? There is no other book like it. ... It is one of a kind, a first, and I would not only buy it but I would recommend it to friends and colleagues, many of whom are visiting China now and are adding 'two-week-expert' ignorance to the two kinds that existed before. This is a book for everyone." --Joshua A. Fishman, research professor of social sciences, Yeshiva University, New York "Professor De Francis has produced a work of great effectiveness that should appeal to a wide-ranging audience. It is at once instructive and entertaining. While being delighted by the flair of his novel approach, the reader will also be led to ponder on some of the most fundamental problems concerning the relations between written languages and spoken languages. Specifically, he will be served a variety of information on the languages of East Asia, not as dry pedantic facts, but as appealing tidbits that whet the intellectual appetite. The expert will find much to reflect on in this book, for Professor DeFrancis takes nothing for granted." --William S.Y. Wang, professor of linguistics, University of California at Berkeley
Music as Agency: Diversities of Perspectives on Artistic Citizenship focuses on the concept, application, interpretation and manifestation of Artistic Citizenship in diverse contexts. The key concepts that the book tackles are: Cultural experience, artistic practice, musical identities, equity, democracy, community, activism, resistance and empathy. In giving an overview of aspects of the compound concept of artistic citizenship, Akuno and Westvall present the outcome of research and interrogation of practice by a global network of educator-researchers from Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe. The book articulates notions of artistic citizenship, coming up with the term artizenship as a derivative of the composite term. It further explains and analyses practical ways of perceiving and relating to art spaces, art practices and arts objects towards belonging, being and becoming in a global space that is disparate, polarised and often alienating, and thus responding to issues such as social justice, identity, participation and inclusion. With a focus on music, the book targets musicians, scholars, educators and enthusiasts keen on gaining a deeper understanding of how music and musicking can influence human interactions towards social integration, trust, cultural awareness and intercultural understanding.
The first edition of ELL (1993, Ron Asher, Editor) was hailed as "the field's standard reference work for a generation". Now the all-new second edition matches ELL's comprehensiveness and high quality, expanded for a new generation, while being the first encyclopedia to really exploit the multimedia potential of linguistics. * The most authoritative, up-to-date, comprehensive, and international reference source in its field * An entirely new work, with new editors, new authors, new topics and newly commissioned articles with a handful of classic articles * The first Encyclopedia to exploit the multimedia potential of linguistics through the online edition * Ground-breaking and International in scope and approach * Alphabetically arranged with extensive cross-referencing * Available in print and online, priced separately. The online version will include updates as subjects develop ELL2 includes: * c. 7,500,000 words * c. 11,000 pages * c. 3,000 articles * c. 1,500 figures: 130 halftones and 150 colour * Supplementary audio, video and text files online * c. 3,500 glossary definitions * c. 39,000 references * Extensive list of commonly used abbreviations * List of languages of the world (including information on no. of speakers, language family, etc.) * Approximately 700 biographical entries (now includes contemporary linguists) * 200 language maps in print and online Also available online via ScienceDirect – featuring extensive browsing, searching, and internal cross-referencing between articles in the work, plus dynamic linking to journal articles and abstract databases, making navigation flexible and easy. For more information, pricing options and availability visit www.info.sciencedirect.com. The first Encyclopedia to exploit the multimedia potential of linguistics Ground-breaking in scope - wider than any predecessor An invaluable resource for researchers, academics, students and professionals in the fields of: linguistics, anthropology, education, psychology, language acquisition, language pathology, cognitive science, sociology, the law, the media, medicine & computer science. The most authoritative, up-to-date, comprehensive, and international reference source in its field
