Visiting Latvian Lecturer Solvita Burr has published her new book, Ceļvedis pilsētu tekstu izpētē (“A Guide for Exploring City Texts”). Although most of the book is in Latvian, it contains text (multimodal examples and activities; the book’s main terms; quotes; LL signs, e.g.) in other languages as well. The book is interactive, and throughout provides many embedded links to valuable language resources (dictionaries, corpora, reference means), internet articles, and social media.
The aims of the book are threefold: (1) to spread the word in Latvia about the linguistic landscape’s being a useful place for learning and an open dataset for language teaching/learning and research, (2) to discuss topics related to 21st century language education: multiliteracies pedagogy, competences-based education, digital teaching/learning techniques, multilingual and multimodal practices, the communicative approach versus the grammatical approach in L1 teaching, etc., and (3) to show ways to incorporate city texts and the LL approach in language teaching, by providing various tasks, assignments, texts, and learning project ideas.
Thus, Ceļvedis pilsētu tekstu izpētē is a reference for linguists (esp., young researchers), a linguo-didactics book for educators (incl. prospective teachers), and a textbook for students (esp., high school students and undergraduate students).
The book is available to everyone without registration or fee: https://dspace.lu.lv/dspace/handle/7/53310.