Part of the "Collected Works of MAK Halliday" series, this work deals with the subject of language and education. It sums up the scope of language education under the following five headings: mother tongue education; second language learning; multilingual societies; contexts of language education; and educational linguistics.

Preface; Acknowledgments; Introduction: Applied Linguistics as an Evolving Theme; PART ONE: MOTHER TONGUE EDUCATION; Editor's Introduction; 1. Linguistic and Teaching of English; 2. A "Linguistic Approach" to the Teaching of the Mother Tongue?; 3. Some Thoughts on Language in the Middle School Years; 4. Differences between Spoken and Written Language: Some Implications for Literacy Teaching; 5. Language and Socialisation: Home and School; 6. Literacy and Linguistics: A Functional Perspective; PART TWO: SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING; Editor's Introduction; 7. General Linguistics and Its Application to Language Teaching; 8. Is Learning a Second Language Like Learning a First Language all Over Again? 9. Learning Asian Languages; PART THREE: MULTILINGUAL SOCIETIES; Editor's Introduction; 10. National Language and Language Planning in a Multilingual Society; 11. Some Reflections on Language Education in Multilingual Societies, as Seen from the Standpoint of Linguistics; 12. Where Languages Meet: The Significance of the Hong Kong Experience; PART FOUR: CONTEXTS OF LANGUAGE EDUCATION; Editor's Introduction; 13. The Notion of "Context" in Language Education; 14. Language Across the Culture; 15. Contexts of English; PART FIVE: EDUCATIONAL LINGUISTICS; Editor's Introduction; 16. A Response to Some Questions on the Language Issue; 17. Some Basic Concepts of Educational Linguistics; 18. On the Concept of "Educational Linguistics"; 19. A Language Development Approach to Education; Bibliography; Index.

The Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday is a series that brings together Halliday's publications in many branches of linguistics, both theoretical and applied (a distinction which he himself rejects), including grammar and semantics, discourse analysis and stylistics, phonology, sociolinguistics, computational linguistics, language education, and child language development.