Theoretical claims about the benefits of conversational interaction have been made by Gass (1997), Long (1996), Pica (1994), and others. The Interaction Hypothesis suggests that negotiated interaction can facilitate SLA and that one reason for this could be that, during interaction, learners may receive feedback on their utterances. An interesting issue, which has challenged interactional research, concerns how learners perceive feedback and whether their perceptions affect their subsequent L2 development. The present research addresses the first of these issues–learners' perceptions about interactional feedback. The study, involving 10 learners of English as a second language and 7 learners of Italian as a foreign language, explores learners' perceptions about feedback provided to them through task-based dyadic interaction. Learners received feedback focused on a range of morphosyntactic, lexical, and phonological forms. After completing the tasks, learners watched videotapes of their previous interactions and were asked to introspect about their thoughts at the time the original interactions were in progress. The results showed that learners were relatively accurate in their perceptions about lexical, semantic, and phonological feedback. However, morphosyntactic feedback was generally not perceived as such. Furthermore, the nature as well as the content of the feedback may have affected learners' perceptions.

This study was designed to test the Fundamental Difference Hypothesis (Bley-Vroman, 1988), which states that, whereas children are known to learn language almost completely through (implicit) domain-specific mechanisms, adults have largely lost the ability to learn a language without reflecting on its structure and have to use alternative mechanisms, drawing especially on their problem-solving capacities, to learn a second language. The hypothesis implies that only adults with a high level of verbal analytical ability will reach near-native competence in their second language, but that this ability will not be a significant predictor of success for childhood second language acquisition. A study with 57 adult Hungarian-speaking immigrants confirmed the hypothesis in the sense that very few adult immigrants scored within the range of child arrivals on a grammaticality judgment test, and that the few who did had high levels of verbal analytical ability; this ability was not a significant predictor for childhood arrivals. This study replicates the findings of Johnson and Newport (1989) and provides an explanation for the apparent exceptions in their study. These findings lead to a reconceptualization of the Critical Period Hypothesis: If the scope of this hypothesis is limited to implicit learning mechanisms, then it appears that there may be no exceptions to the age effects that the hypothesis seeks to explain.

This study clarifies issues related to the transferability of bound morphology and reports on an empirical investigation of morphological transfer in the spatial expressions of Finnish-speaking (n= 140) and Swedish-speaking (n= 70) adolescent learners of English. The results indicate that both the bound, agglutinative morphology of the L1 Finnish spatial system and the free, prepositional morphology of the L1 Swedish spatial system constrain the types of options that learners pursue in their L2 English spatial reference. Additionally, however, the structural and semantic differences between the two L1 systems result in different patterns of spatial reference in the L2. We characterize these differences in terms of semantic transfer and simplification, and go on to show how transfer and simplification interact in our data.

This study is a quantitative and qualitative investigation of the effects of awareness, or the lack thereof, on 32 adult second or foreign language (L2) learners' subsequent intake and written production of targeted Spanish morphological forms. Think-aloud protocol data, gathered while learners completed a problem-solving task (a crossword puzzle) and postexposure assessment tasks (a multiple-choice recognition task and a written production task), were used to measure awareness or the lack thereof, and morphological learning was assessed by learners' performances on the two postexposure tasks. From a theoretical perspective, no dissociation between awareness and further processing of targeted forms was found in this study, the results of which are compatible with the claim that awareness plays a crucial role in subsequent processing of L2 data (e.g., Robinson, 1995; Schmidt, 1990, 1993, 1994, 1995). From a methodological perspective, the data collection procedure clearly underscores the need for studies that investigate the roles of attention and awareness in second language acquisition (SLA) to gather as much data as possible from different sources that reveal participants' internal processes. By attempting to ascertain what learners really attend to or are aware of, or both, while exposed to or interacting with L2 data, such information can also address the methodological issue of how representative learners' performances in experimental groups really are in studies conducted under an attentional framework in SLA.

The title of this volume, Perspectives on Foreign and Second Language Pedagogy, leads one to expect treatises on the relative merits of varying second-language classroom practices. Nothing could be farther from reality. It is, rather, a collection of essays addressing issues in second language acquisition, most with relevance to learner processes, context, and L2 development, with special emphasis on vocabulary.

According to its authors, Teaching ESL Composition: Purpose, Process, and Practice is designed to help pre- and in-service teachers become experts in the field of L2 writing pedagogy. If readers take this text seriously and practice a healthy portion of the application activities, they should succeed in moving toward this ambitious goal. The book is divided into nine chapters, each addressing a different practical aspect of teaching composition. At the start of each chapter, “Questions for Reflection” builds schema; a summary and “Reflection and Review” questions check for comprehension at the end. Each chapter also has application activities referenced to the topic they address throughout the text and in the “Application Activity Thematic Reference Guide.” Most chapters provide figures and appendixes containing authentic samples and models. At the end of the book there is an extensive list of references including research, practical guides, and workbooks in ESL and L1 composition.

This book contains 16 papers that were presented at the 28th Carnegie Mellon Symposium on Cognition in 1997, entitled “Emergentist Approaches to Language Acquisition.” Emergentism assumes that linguistic properties arise from the interaction of general-purpose cognitive processes with environmental data, rather than from prewired, language-specific constraints.

This easy-to-read paperback is the result of the author's desire to learn more about how students think and feel about themselves as learners in a “large urban college” pre-freshman ESL composition class. It is intended for teachers, scholars, and graduate students who are interested in how students learn to write as well as their accompanying thought processes and emotions. The main body of the book, chapters 4–7, presents “case studies of the journal writing experiences of five students” (p. 8) chosen to represent the variety of cultural backgrounds and personal involvement with the freewriting process in journal keeping. The students came from Colombia, Ethiopia, the Dominican Republic, People's Republic of China, and Japan.

This book addresses issues of major concern among researchers and practitioners of second language (L2) reading, including theory of reading, testing of reading comprehension, L2 reading instruction, and methodological issues in L2 reading research. The book not only critically examines reading theories, previous studies, and conventional practice in teaching and testing, but also provides valuable insights into new forms of testing and teaching materials for L2 readers.

Braidi's new textbook is intended to provide an overview of multiple perspectives on the acquisition of second language syntax to “applied linguistics students” and “prospective L2 teachers” (preface, p. vii). After an introduction that lays a good deal of historical and conceptual groundwork, we find a chapter on “first-language and second-language interrelations” and then the core of the volume comprising a chapter each on Universal Grammar (UG) perspectives, perspectives based in typological universals, processing approaches, and functional approaches. She ends with a conclusion that summarizes major findings and discusses implications for her readership. The text includes fairly extensive references as well as name, language, and subject indexes.

Vivian Zamel and Ruth Spack have collected papers spanning 19 years of discussion on teaching academic literacy, offering an illuminating journey through the issues. In a postmodern spirit, the editors emphasize the multiplicity of literacies and the value of students' own ways of knowing. The question arises, though, why this should be specifically taught by applying a particular pedagogical model, because it appears to be a normal part of any intellectual process to fall back on previous knowledge and experience when faced with a new task. Indeed, weeding it out would seem a bigger problem, should anyone want to accomplish that. The recognition and appreciation of students' previous experiences and earlier knowledge is nevertheless welcome, and there are a few well-chosen papers narrating personal experiences of struggle between different cultural identities and logics. Yet many of the papers in this volume, particularly in its first half, tacitly seem to assume that English is the language of the world and that the North American context equals universal. Much of the discussion is dominated by a controversy between discipline-specific (genre-based or disciplinary community-based) and expressive writing, or, perhaps, rather a crusade against genre-based teaching, given that proponents of this orientation have not been given voice. From a North European perspective, this bifurcation into two opposing camps seems hard to comprehend—many of us have happily combined genre analysis, analysis of cultural differences in rhetoric, and critical discourse analysis with a view of writing as process and discovery.

There exists a general belief that the ideal English teacher is a native speaker (NS). Because of this native speaker fallacy, it is undeniable that nonnative speaker (NNS) teachers have been marginalized in the English language teaching (ELT) profession. Until recently, however, the voices of NNS English teachers expressing their own concerns have rarely been heard. Non-Native Educators in English Language Teachingis the first and most comprehensive work done in the field to fill this gap. It focuses solely on the theme of NNS educators in ELT and provides a forum for language professionals to discuss the issues surrounding the NS-NNS dichotomy from linguistic, psychological, pedagogical, and sociopolitical perspectives. This anthology is unique and powerful. All of the contributors are NNS professionals from diverse linguistic and ethnic backgrounds. Because of the unique nature of its contributors, purpose, and contents, this volume makes a great impact on, and a valuable contribution to, the fields of TESOL and applied linguistics. It is powerful because the messages are coming from authorities on the theme—NNSs themselves.

This book, which focuses on the Lowland Scots variety of English spoken in Glasgow, is a welcome addition to the John Benjamins series “Varieties of English Around the World.” Macaulay brings together work based on data collected in three decades—the '70s, '80s, and '90s. The 12 chapters thus represent several strands of research, all centered on the basic theme of language standards and variation. Macaulay argues that the “view of the inherent superiority of standardized varieties is misleading and that allvarieties of language persist because they are functional for their speakers” (p. 5).

Scholars in the multidisciplinary fields of language studies will benefit from acquiring Language and Its Normal Processingby Vivien Tartter. The volume, which functions well as a textbook or reference book, contains chapters incorporating basic concepts, themes, trends, and controversies in psycholinguistics. One of the author's principal interests in writing the book (and for us to read the book) is to “communicate the fun and excitement . . . in psycholinguistic research” (p. xv). The author successfully synthesizes research on a variety of topics: meaning and meaning processing; syntax and sentence processing; speech and its perception and production; as well as presentations on sociolinguistics; first and second language acquisition, and multilingualism; and the psychology of reading and writing printed text.

Teachers will find this book useful both for self-study and teaching. The linguist-authors introduce nonspecialist readers to the rich landscape of local and parochial ways of speaking that still exist in the United States, despite the uniforming pressures from the language of the national media and leveling effects on language of individual mobility. They account for linguistic facts of differences between dialects (in chapters 1 and 2 and the appendix) and also between different discourse styles (chapter 3). They do this with respect for differences between people. A major purpose of the book is to counter misconceptions that dialect speakers are somehow deficient. They are not, of course. They are anchored in the local community or group, and this local grounding is socially-psychologically sound and represents a very positive value indeed; or from another neutral perspective, they simply talk differently. Dialects are good or different, but never bad, unless people think others are bad just because they talk differently. The book helps any reader shed such groundless prejudice.

Elizabeth Coelho's Teaching and Learning in Multicultural Schools(TLMS) is a very good book for its kind. Its primary audience is teachers at the primary and secondary level of schools in situations of cultural pluralism, the “multicultural” of the title. Schools are actually rarely multicultural, even if their students represent different cultures in contact, but rather serve as the major instrument of acculturation and assimilation into the dominant ideology. TLMSattempts to counteract this tendency by a valiant attempt of an “account of what is required to teach and learn effectively in multicultural schools” (p. x)! Coelho's ultimate goal is using the schools as agents for change in society, affirming the richness and stimulation to be found in cultural diversity.

For the last decade, college campuses across the United States have witnessed an influx of U.S.-educated nonnative speakers of English. Many of these students come to postsecondary institutions with almost nativelike communicative competence yet marginal literacy skills. This mismatch in proficiency has proved to be a daunting challenge to ESL and composition faculty. Furthermore, few researchers have examined the linguistic needs of this population, creating a gap in our knowledge of how best to intervene with these students. Generation 1.5 Meets College Composition: Issues in the Teaching of Writing to U.S.-Educated Learners of ESLis one of the first attempts to fill that void. This noteworthy volume brings together the current research on U.S.-educated learners of ESL, or Generation 1.5, a reference to U.S.-educated immigrant students who are caught somewhere between the cultural and linguistic experiences of the first and second generations.

This volume is a valuable contribution to the field of language teacher education (LTE) because of its innovative approach to language learning and teaching as well as its consistent organization. As noted in the introduction, the book is intended for language teachers “who will make, or have made, the step from teaching to training” (p. 1). To this end, the author relates the teachers' experience and understanding of the classroom context to a broadly social constructivist perspective, based on the relevance of the personal and social dimensions of learning to teach.

The focus of this book is the very early stages of language acquisition, with (an inevitable) particular focus on phonological and lexical development. As such, it might have been better if enfantsin the original title had been translated as “infants,” because the main title might mislead one into thinking that the book would illuminate a longer developmental path than it actually does. That said, there is much in this volume that might interest a second language researcher interested in second language phonology and lexis who would like to be reminded of what the human animal does under the natural circumstances of first language acquisition. It presents a particularly clear picture of the sensitivities of infants to human sounds, as well as a detailed account of how those sensitivities become tuned to particular language characteristics very early on.

The chapters of this book come from the 1997 Finnish Conference on Linguistics and the Scandinavian Summer School on Language Diversity. A number of the contributions focus on endangered languages, in particular, Ingrian Finnish. Hallamaa discusses developing appropriate methodologies to study endangered languages and evaluate individual language proficiency. Chapters by Koko and Riionheimo describe the loss of Ingrian through shift to Estonian. Ingrian is, again, the topic for Savijiirvi, who compares and provides a detailed sociohistory of four Balto-Finnic languages: Votian, Ingrian, Estonian, and Finnish. Duray writes about language death, focusing on the extralinguistic factors that have caused a community-wide shift to Russian by the Nganasan-speaking people.