The MIT Encyclopedia of Communication Disorders (Bradford Books) Review

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(More customer reviews)I've been practicing speech-language pathology for 14 years and just recently purchased this book. It's a wonderful addition to my professional library. I highly recommend it for any SLP student or professional.

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A massive reference work on the scale of MITECS (The MIT Encyclopedia ofCognitive Sciences), The MIT Encyclopedia of Communication Disorders will become thestandard reference in this field for both research and clinical use. It offersalmost 200 detailed entries, covering the entire range of communication and speechdisorders in children and adults, from basic science to clinical diagnosis.MITECD isdivided into four sections that reflect the standard categories within the field(also known as speech-language pathology and audiology): Voice, Speech, Language,and Hearing. Within each category, entries are organized into three subsections:Basic Science, Disorders, and Clinical Management. Basic Science includes relevantinformation on normal anatomy and physiology, physics, psychology and psychophysics,and linguistics; this provides a scientific foundation for entries in the othersubsections. The entries that appear under Disorders offer information on thedefinition and characterization of specific disorders, and tools for theiridentification and assessment. The Clinical Management subsection describesappropriate interventions, including behavioral, pharmacological, surgical, andprosthetic.Because the approach to communication disorders can be quite differentfor children and adults, many topics include separate entries reflecting this.Although some disorders that are first diagnosed in childhood may persist in someform throughout adulthood, many disorders can have an onset in either childhood oradulthood, and the timing of onset can have many implications for both assessmentand intervention.Topics covered in MITECD include cochlear implants for children andadults, pitch perception, tinnitus, alaryngeal voice and speech rehabilitation,neural mechanisms of vocalization, holistic voice therapy techniques, computer-basedapproaches to children?s speech and language disorders, neurogenic mutism, regionaldialect, agrammatism, global aphasia, and psychosocial problems associated withcommunicative disorders.

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New American Streamline Destinations - Advanced: Destinations Workbook B (Units 41-80): B (New American Streamline: Destinations (High-Intermediate-Advanced)) Review

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(More customer reviews)I'm an ESL teacher and I've used this collection for over 3 years to teach adults. I have many students who have learned using it and in my household only there are 3 of them. Yes, I've taught my own family! It's filled with great exercises, fun lessons and easy to do step-by-step class plans. Buy it, it'll change your method. With this books you don't even need the flash cards!

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New American Streamline combines natural language, everyday situations, and extensive practice of all four skills to give students a practical command of simple, spoken English. Each of the three levels (Departures, Connections, and Destinations) can be used as independently or as a series.

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Phonology and Language Use (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics) Review

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(More customer reviews)After decades of theories built upon painfully abstract argumentation, here is an approach to language that fits how we actually use it--and with how we learn, master, and play with much of what we do in life (vision, music, work, sports, etc.). Chomskian structuralist linguistics treats language as if it were some mysterious coding machine, completely unlike other cognitive, purpose-driven human activities. In go concepts and noises; deep inside the black machine, its gears and rules and constraints turn and whir; then out come the utterances of English or Asmat or Vietnamese (depends on which "machine" we have). And once we get our machines, we're stuck with them--they don't evolve. Each machine/language has its own set of rules, and only elite linguists understand them.
Like cognitive linguistics, Bybee's usage-based approach treats our use of language as very much like our uses of other skills. As with other skills, fluency comes through frequent practice. Many other parts of the UB approach also seem obvious or "common sense," and Bybee excels at making their explanatory force clear. This approach is still new, and still developing, but it looks like it has a LOT of potential for future research--not just in phonology, but also in morphology, syntax, and in grammaticalization (and other studies of diachronic language change).

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Referencing new developments in cognitive and functional linguistics, phonetics, and connectionist modeling, this book investigates various ways in which a speaker/hearer's experience with language affects the representation of phonology. Rather than assuming phonological representations in terms of phonemes, Joan Bybee adopts an exemplar model, in which specific tokens of use are stored and categorized phonetically with reference to variables in the context.This model allows an account of phonetically gradual sound change that produces lexical variation, and provides an explanatory account of the fact that many reductive sound changes affect high frequency items first.

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