Todays schools are characterized by significant cultural and linguistic diversityand teaching is correspondingly becoming an increasingly complex, multi-faceted, and challenging endeavor. Understanding Language and Literacy Development features a wide variety of effective supporting strategies to address the varying language and literacy developmental characteristics of children and adolescents in contemporary classroom settings. Utilizing Critical Discourse Analysis as a conceptual framework, Wang examines the complexity of language and literacy and their roles in academic learning. The author expertly discusses childrens developmental stages, considering a wide range of topics including English language acquisition among children and adolescentsand the typical issues related to comprehension and production at different stages and ages of acquisitionas well as the impact of various language impairments (from SLI to autism). Special features of this work include questions that engage and challenge the reader throughout the chapters, and exercises designed to facilitate understanding of language phenomena in the classroom and elsewhere; the author also ties her discussion into the new Common Core standards that underlie the public school curriculum. Innovative and timely, this is an invaluable resource to assist in meeting the teaching challenges of 21st-century classrooms.