Teaching and Researching Speaking provides an overview of the main approaches to researching spoken language and their practical application to teaching, classroom materials, and assessment. The history and current practices of teaching and researching speaking are presented through the lens of bigger theoretical issues about the object of study in linguistics, social attitudes to the spoken form, and the relationships between spoken and written language. A unique feature of the book is the way it clearly explains the nature of speaking and how it is researched and puts it into the context of a readable and holistic overview of language theory. This new edition is fully updated and revised to reflect the latest developments on classroom materials and oral assessment, as well as innovations in conversation analysis. The resources section is brought up-to-date with new media and currently available networks, online corpora, and mobile applications. This is a key resource for applied linguistics students, English language teachers, teacher trainers, and novice researchers.

"Speaking is perhaps the least researched, most vaguely defined skill in teaching second-languages. This neglect makes this much-updated version of Teaching and Researching Speaking very welcome. It combines historical and current approaches to teaching speaking with clearly explained approaches to varied types of research. It fills a critically important niche in applied linguistics and teacher education."John M. Levis, Iowa State University, USA "Anyone who is familiar with Rebecca Hughes' previous editions of Teaching and Researching Speaking will have eagerly awaited the publication ofthis third edition. In this volume she coauthors with Beatrice Szczepek Reed to broaden considerably the scope of the theoretical discussion of the phenomenon of speaking, using comprehensive and multifaceted empirical perspectives. Readers will also be rewarded with an up-to-date consideration of the implications of these analytical lenses for the teaching and assessment of speaking and coverage ofthe wide range of contemporary media which now inform both research and practice. The richness and diversity of the discussion in the volume are a testament to the authors' extensive experience of research in this field of applied linguistics."Anne Burns, University of New South Wales, Australia