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report. A greater degree of analysis might have extended the utility of this volume for educators and language policymakers. However taken as a whole, this volume provides an illuminating insight into the ongoing development ofprimary ELT policy and the overwhelming speed of global change in early language teaching. As such it makesa valuable contribution to the field.

Reference

Gardner, H., 1993. Multiple Intelligences: The Theory in Practice. Basic Books, New York.

Fiona MiddleweekDepartment of Education, University of Oxford, 15 Norham Gardens,

Oxford OX2 6PY, United KingdomE-mail address: fiona.middleweek@education.ox.ac.uk

doi:10.1016/j.system.2010.06.005

Doing Action Research in English Language Teaching. A Guide for Practitioners, Anne Burns. Routledge, New York(2010). 196 pp.

The intended audience for this guide to doing action research is ‘pre-service and in-service teachers’. Although it isaddressed throughout to teachers wishing to engage in research to reflect on, and ideally improve, their own practice, itwill be most useful for students on Master’s degree courses in TESOL or Applied Linguistics who have already donesome teaching and are now looking for topics for their dissertations. It helpfully starts with a chapter entitled ‘What isaction research?’ before moving on to chapters dealing with planning the action, putting the plan into action,observing the results of the plan and reflecting and planning for future action.

All five chapters in the book start with Pre-reading questions and include Reflection points throughout: a formatreflecting the style of modern classroom textbooks with which readers are likely to be familiar. The Classroom voicessections give examples of particular named teachers reflecting on their own situations around the world and the Actionpoints encourage the reader to go and do something active, either with colleagues or alone, in order to take the topicfurther or make sure it is understood. The Summary points at the end of each chapter remind the reader of what has beendiscussed so far. Each chapter closes with a useful list of References. This clear framework echoes that of a lesson plan,and seems designed to provide a secure environment for a teacher or student of education embarking on a new venture.

Burns makes the point that action research is dynamic and recursive and indeed, can be messy. The second chapteron planning aims to help the reader address some of the fundamental issues of research, such as getting permissionfrom the relevant people and addressing ethical questions before going ahead. She also deals with the practicalities ofsearching databases such as ERIC (there is a clear step-by-step guide to this on p.41). To experienced researchers, suchas supervisors, some of this advice may seem unnecessary but to me this is the strength of this handbook. By notexpecting the reader to have much prior knowledge, the guide provides enough information to save the noviceresearcher a lot of time which could otherwise be wasted.

Chapter 3 deals with the methodology required for successful action research. It covers observation, interviews,surveys and questionnaires, journal-keeping and the idea of triangulation in order to strengthen data collection.Leading on from that, the fourth chapter considers how to analyse the data, preferably without waiting until the end ofthe data collection so that the research can be redirected if necessary. This is an important point to make, sinceinexperienced action researchers can flounder when the information they have collected turns out to be inconclusive ordifficult to interpret. Many teachers are wary of statistical analysis and Burns is aware of this, giving a simple overviewof descriptive statistics (pp. 121e128) and referring the reader to publications such as Brown and Rodgers (2002) andDornyei (2007) for more comprehensive guidance on using statistics. Her guide does not seek to compete with theseworks. Her goal is to encourage teachers and students to start a manageable piece of research to inform their practiceand make them more effective classroom teachers.

507Book reviews / System 38 (2010) 499e511

The final chapter deals with reflection and planning for further action, and encourages readers first to reflect on alltheir reactions to their research. The next stage, if the research has reached some conclusions, is to share it with others,either informally in talks or discussions with other teachers, or more formally in seminar or conference presentations.Moving on from oral communication, she suggests writing about research outcomes in informal chat rooms or blogs aswell as in professional journals. Many of her readers will be writing up their research in the form of a thesis or otheracademic paper, but by giving a wide range of options for disseminating the results of research, she widens the scopeof the book and encourages all teachers to value whatever research they are engaged in.

The idea of reflection on teaching underpins this book, and whether or not teachers have a firm idea of whatresearch they would like to do before they pick it up, it is a useful book in that it provides checklists, reminders,choices and references to other sources of information. It is up-to-date, in that all the websites I checked were stillthere (as they should be for a book published this year), although, of course, websites can disappear even more quicklythan books go out of print. For anyone thinking of starting some action research, I would recommend this guide as oneof the books to read first. It is encouraging and enthusiastic, and enthusiasm is a prerequisite for successful researchand, indeed, for successful professional development.

References

Brown, J.D., Rodgers, T.S., 2002. Doing Second Language Research. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Dornyei, Z., 2007. Research Methods in Applied Linguistics. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Deborah MasonLanguage Centre, University of Oxford, 12 Woodstock Road,

Oxford OX2 6HT, United KingdomE-mail address: deborah.mason@lang.ox.ac.uk

doi:10.1016/j.system.2010.06.005

Studies in French Applied Linguistics, Dalila Ayoun (Ed.). John Benjamins, Amsterdam (2008). 400 pp.

When I offered to review this book for System, I was expecting an edited volume outlining foreign languageteaching methods and theory in France and French-speaking countries. In fact, this is the second volume in a series,following French Applied Linguistics (edited by Ayoun in 2007), which examines a very wide range of language-related research e going well beyond linguistics applied to language teaching e in various French-speaking contexts(Canada, Switzerland, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and Guadeloupe, in addition to France). The volume is dedicated tothe late Celia Jakubowicz, a leader in applying generative linguistics to the study of specific language impairment(SLI), and includes one of the last chapters she collaborated on.

The eleven chapters in this second volume are divided into two very broad and unrelated sections; the first of thesesections concerns the acquisition of French as both a first (L1) or second/foreign (L2) language, ‘in various settings’ (p. ix).These settings are indeed varied, since the chapters range from Lyster’s survey of research on immersion-based classroomlearning in bilingual settings (Chapter 1) andHamel’s description of natural language processing applications in interactiveFreeText language-learning activities (Chapter 3), to Laganaro’s neurolinguistic account of syllable and word processing(Chapter 2), Jakubowicz and Tuller’s description of selective language impairment (SLI) from a generative point of view(Chapter 4), and Hamann’s generative account of L1 development in normal and SLI populations (Chapter 5). These lattertwo chapters illustrate Jakubowicz’ Computational Complexity Hypothesis, and its application in measuring languagedevelopment. The second section of the book, called ‘French in applied linguistics’ is devoted to sociolinguistically-orientated research: Aitsiselmi andMarley describe the changing political and social status of French in North Africa overthe past century (Chapter 6); Managan explains the social and political complications involved in establishing a writtenorthography for Guadeloupean Kreyol (Chapter 7); Kearn traces the impact of computer-mediated communication onFrench literacy (Chapter 8); Pooley summarizes research into the status and the phonological and lexical ‘ethnolectalfeatures’ (p. 340) of French youth vernacular, concluding that it is less exclusionary than is commonly reported (Chapter