"L. S. Vygotsky, the Russian psychologist, argued that the true test of any scientific theory is not the contribution it makes to our understanding of the object of study but the extent to which it improves the concrete practical activities of people, including those that take place in educational settings. The fourteen original chapters included in this volume document innovations in second and foreign language teaching that are rooted in Vygotsky's theory of cognitive development. Researchers and language teaching practitioners will find implementations at the classroom and programmatic levels of Vygotskian principles and concepts, including cognitive mediation, the zone of proximal development, activity theory, internalization, verbalization, and materialization."--Jacket.

Both sides of the conversation / Matthew E. Poehner -- The effects of dynamic assessment on L2 listening comprehension / Ruima Ableeva -- Changing examination structures within a college of education / Tony Erben, Ruth Ban, and Robert Summers -- A dialogic approach to teaching L2 writing / Holbrook Mahn -- Embodied language performance / Steven G. McCafferty and John Haught -- Agency in the classroom / Leo van Lier -- Revolutionary pedagogies / Eduardo Negueruela -- French as a second language university students learn the grammatical concept of voice / Sharon Lapkin, Merrill Swain, and Ibtissem Knouzi -- Mediation as objectification in the development of professional academic discourse / Steven L. Thorne, Jonathan Reinhardt, and Paula Golombek -- A concept-based approach to teaching writing through genre analysis / Marilia Ferreira and James P. Lantolf -- Materializing linguistic concepts through 3-D clay modeling / Maria Serrano-Lopez and Matthew E. Poehner -- The unfulfilled promise of teaching for communicative competence / Sally Sieloff Magnan -- Contribution and language learning / Howard Grabois.