Whether you are studying applied or forensic linguistics, intercultural communication, CELTA or TESOL, the library has books, journals and databases to suit your needs.
Welcome to our guide about Language and Applied Linguistics resources. As the Learning and Research Librarian for Humanities and Languages, I am here to support you in your learning and assignments.
Learning & Research Librarian for Humanities and Languagues
You will find English language books on the 1st and 2nd floors of Augustine House.
Remember to check the different areas housing the 7-day loan and 4-week loans.
The library also has copies of language learning texts and phrase books which you can borrow. You can find these by searching “German”, “French”, “Spanish”, “Chinese”, “Italian” or the language you are interested in. It also has a selection of e-books such as Italian for Dummies, Modern Italian Grammar, Topics, questions, keywords : a handbook for students of German. The library has access to Shi Ji’s Chinese Reader 1 via Overdrive. This is an e-book platform for fiction which allows you to download the Libby app and access e-books via your phone.
The Library has a good collection of French literature, but other world fiction will be available in translation.
There are many excellent sources of world literature online. Some out-of-copyright material has been digitized by the websites below and can be keyword searched.
If you can’t get to the library, you can access the university’s e-resources via your wifi. The library has hundreds of relevant e-books which you can access by logging into your account on Library Search. Simply limit your results in the left-hand pane of the search screen to e-books and click on the link to CCCU e-book to download or read online. You’ll find we have some amazing titles such as David Crystal’s Internet linguistics: a student guide and David Block’s Second language identities.
There are also useful handbooks such as:
You can access the Oxford English Dictionary, one of the most authoritative dictionaries of the English language, via the Find Database A to Z link on Library Search. Remember to log in to Library Search using your computing username and password to access the full-text of the dictionary. Read the guide to find out more.
You can find language dictionaries on the second floor in the 400s. Remember to check the different areas housing the 7-day loan and 4-week loans when looking for books. There are also many good online dictionaries:
Journals (also known as Periodicals) are similar to magazines in that they are published regularly but are written by academics and researchers rather than journalists. The subject matter can be very detailed but will be rigorously researched and backed up with evidence. The hallmark of a good journal will be footnotes or in-text citations and a bibliography of reading to evidence research. They are also often peer-reviewed which means that they have been through a thorough editorial process. You can find print copies of journals on the 2nd floor of Augustine House in the silent zone near the lifts. These are for use in the library only. Why not take a peek at English Teaching Professional or English for Specific Purposes?
Other print language journals include:
The Library also provides access to online journals such as Applied Linguistics, Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, English for Specific Purposes, European Journal of Communication, Journal of Second Language Writing, Studies in Second Language Acquisition and Language Learning.
To find out more about journals published in the discipline of language and linguistics, you can use an app such as Browzine. Not only does it store all your favourite journals, it enables you to easily find and read the most recent issue from your mobile device (and store them in a bibliographic management tool such as Zotero or Mendeley). Browse the subject menu for Social Science and Behavioural Science to find the linguistics journals.
Sometimes you may want to look for journal articles on a specific topic, such as second language acquisition or globalization. You don’t have to browse for articles using Browzine, but can use a search engine such as the CCCU search tool Library Search or Google Scholar. Both are good, but they have different functions and it is important to be aware of that. Google Scholar searches scholarly material, but you may not be able to access all of the material whereas Library Search is linked to the CCCU journal subscriptions. Run a quick search in Library Search to find full-text journal articles to read online using key words or phrases connected with your research topic e.g. “global Englishes” or “sociolinguistics”. You can read the Library Search quick guide for more information.
JSTOR is also a popular journal database which provides access to past issues of journals. Search within the subset of Linguistics titles for back issues of Language in Society and Language Acquisition.
Alternatively search within the Languages and Literature subset of JSTOR journals for back issues of journals such as the Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies, Modern Language Review, Modern Language Quarterly, Modern Language Studies and Modern Languages Journal.
If you need a journal article that the university doesn’t subscribe to, try document delivery. It’s a great service for that end-of-year assignment.
The Directory of Open Access Journals includes journals such as Advances in Language and Literary Studies. Open access journals are often scholarly, but the difference is, they believe in making their research accessible to all people who have an internet connection. A good example of a peer-reviewed open access journal is the International Journal of Forensic Linguistics.
Core is another excellent source of open access scholarly content.
Humanising Language Teaching is an example of a free online magazine which provides high quality content for current awareness.
Newspapers are available online via Library Search. You can find these in Find databases A to Z on the Library Search homepage.
They include:
The EL Gazette is a good newspaper for keeping up to date with news in English language teaching.
Another useful title is The Linguist, produced by the Chartered Institute of Linguists. It’s a bi-monthly publication with insights into the profession.
You can also read the Read all about it! blog post to find out more about how you can interrogate the newspaper databases to identify language usage.
Kanopy is a great video-streaming service which includes a number of documentaries such as The Foundations of American English. You can browse the resource for Global Studies and Languages material where you will find language programmes for learning Spanish and classical languages.
Plus, we have access to Box of Broadcasts (BoB) which archives British TV and radio broadcasts. You can search for a topic and find BBC, Channel 4 and Sky documentaries. Another great feature is that you can take clips of programmes and put them in your presentations or analyse the transcripts. Visit the Learning on Screen How to Videos or look at the CCCU Box of Broadcasts guide.
Use the specialist databases via the Find databases link in LibrarySearch for a more advanced search of the academic literature available to you.
The following are key databases for your subject.
British Education Index (BEI) - BEI includes full-text articles as well as references to journal articles about teaching language studies. The following titles are indexed by the BEI: Applied Linguistics, ELT Journal, English for Specific Purposes, First Language, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, International Journal of Multilingualism, International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, Language and Education, Language and Intercultural Communication, Language Awareness, Language in Society, Language Learning Journal, Language Teaching, Language Testing, Language Culture and Curriculum, Second Language Research, Speaking English, World Englishes. Magazines such as Language Issues, Teacher Trainer: A Practical Journal for Those who Train, Mentor and Educate TESOL Teachers and Use of English are also indexed. See this library video for more advice on searching BEI or read the guide.
ERIC - Produced by the Education Resources Information Centre. Includes useful titles such as Journal of Second Language Writing.
JSTOR - A full-text archive of core scholarly journals, dating from the first issue up until two to five years ago. Subject coverage includes Arts and Sciences, with over 290 journal titles relevant to Language and Literature including, for example, the Modern Language Journal.
Project Muse - An online database which provides full-text access to a number of relevant Language and Linguistics titles.
SCOPUS - A multi-disciplinary database which includes core language journals such as ELT Journal, Language Teaching Research, System: An International Journal of Educational Technology and Applied Linguistics, TESOL Journal, TESOL Quarterly.
Please note you will be able to access the full text of many of the articles you find when searching the databases but will not be able to read the full text of all the results you find. You may wish to place a document delivery request for any items which are not readily available.
There are a lot of brilliant websites that may be relevant to your studies, but there are also many that are not, so it is essential to evaluate the material carefully to decide whether they are scholarly enough.
Recommended websites include:
There are many freely available corpus linguistics tools available online which allow you to analyse language.
Have a look at the library guide to corpus linguistics for more information. Here are some recommended sites:
Anthology Reference Corpus (Sketch Engine) – an English corpus of conference and journal papers in natural language processing and computational linguistics.
British Academic Spoken English Corpus (Sketch Engine)
British Academic Written English Corpus (Sketch Engine)
CLiC Dickens Project – a corpus linguistics project.