This study investigated sentence-processing strategies adopted by advanced nonnative speakers (NNSs) and native speakers (NSs) of English in the context of an English structure with which NNSs reportedly have an acquisition difficulty (e.g., Swan & Smith, 2001)—namely, modal perfect (MP). Participants read MP sentences such as He could have worked at the shoe factory and closely related analogous sentences (e.g., He could have work at the shoe factory), and reading times and errors were measured in an online grammaticality-judgment task. It was hypothesized that NSs would have a processing preference for MP sentences compared to the analogues, reflecting the primacy of syntactic information in NS processing and a preference for late closure, whereas NNSs would show no such preference because they rely less on syntactic information when processing sentences. The results revealed, however, that both NSs and NNSs read MP sentences more quickly and with fewer errors than the closely related analogues, consistent with a processing preference for MP sentences. Both groups were also influenced by word-category frequency information, which moderated, but did not fundamentally alter, their syntactic preference for MP. The significance of these findings is discussed in terms of models of second-language sentence processing and NNSs’ reported MP acquisition difficulty.

On April 23rd of this year, at the initiative of the current group of editorial assistants (Elizabeth Grace Winkler, Llorenç Comajoan, and Donald F. Reindl), a symposium was organized on the Bloomington campus of Indiana University to celebrate the 20th anniversary of SSLA's founding. Presentations on the past, present, and future state of research on second language acquisition were presented by Editorial Board and Advisory Committee members Susan Gass, John Schumann, Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig, and Patsy Lightbown. It is noteworthy that this commemorative event, the creation of SSLA, would not have taken place without the direct intervention of another group of graduate students, the Indiana University Linguistics Club. Without the IULC producing and disseminating the fledgling publication that was SSLA in 1978, the journal would never have made it beyond the drawing board. In this note prefacing the last issue of Volume 20, I would like to narrate the conditions of SSLA's birth and comment on the journal's contribution to second language acquisition research.

Researchers interested in second language attrition have studied a wide variety of bilingual speakers, ranging from foreign language students who learned a language through classroom study to those who have developed high proficiency during life abroad. What these studies have in common is their investigation of questions related to bilingual speakers' loss of L2 knowledge or proficiency. Hansen's collection of papers presents research on a range of bilingual speakers who have the Japanese language in common, whether that language is their L1 or L2. The book is divided into two major sections. The first section, consisting of three papers, presents studies of Japanese children of elementary school age who learned English while living abroad but who have returned to Japan. This section will be of interest to EFL teachers of children as well as to L2 researchers. The four papers in the second section of the book examine the attrition of Japanese by adults. Most of these adults became subjects while residing in the United States after working or studying in Japan. The adults studied in these chapters had a variety of different combinations of exposure and formal study and also a broad range of years away from Japan, from 9 months to 30+ years. Additionally, the subjects of one study never lived in Japan at all but learned Japanese during Japan's occupation of Micronesia.

The current study set out to examine to what degree age of acquisition (AOA), defined as a learner’s first intensive exposure to a second language (L2) environment, mediates the final state of postpubertal, spoken vocabulary attainment. In Study 1, spontaneous speech samples were elicited from experienced Japanese users of English (n = 41) using storytelling and interview tasks. The samples were analyzed using a range of corpus- and rater-based lexical measures and compared to the speech of inexperienced Japanese speakers (n = 40) and native speakers of English (n = 10). The results showed that most experienced L2 learners tended to demonstrate nativelike proficiency for relatively easy lexical dimensions of speech (i.e., richness), but that AOA appeared to play a key role in predicting the ultimate attainment of relatively difficult lexical dimensions (i.e., appropriateness). In Study 2, the findings were successfully replicated with experienced L1 Polish users of English (n = 50).

This paper examines how research in second language acquisition has approached the study of cognitive individual differences in the process and product of L2 writing from a theoretical and empirical perspective, paying special attention to the three empirical studies included in this special issue. The paper is divided into three sections. The first section examines the cognitive abilities that have been investigated in L2 writing research, among which working memory stands out as the most widely studied. The second section synthesizes the findings reported by the empirical studies in this issue in relation to the role of working memory in L2 writing behaviors and outcomes. The last section suggests future lines of research that can broaden the current scope of research on writing and cognitive individual differences, mostly centered on the components of the working memory system. This research has important theoretical implications, as little is known about how different cognitive individual differences are implicated in writing, as well as pedagogical implications, as the findings can inform about optimal performance and learning conditions for learners with diverse cognitive ability profiles.

CONSTRUCTING A LANGUAGE: A USAGE-BASED THEORY OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION. Michael Tomasello. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003. Pp. viii + 388. $45.00 cloth.

Michael Tomasello has an impressive opus of publications in both child language development and primate research. This book represents a synthesis of that work as well as the exposition of an account of language development, which provides a thought-provoking challenge to the generative enterprise. As such, it is an important contribution to the literature of first language acquisition, and by extrapolation, of SLA, because it offers an account of how learners can extract language from the input without reference to linguistic-specific predispositions. It succeeds in many respects and fails in others, as this review will try to explain.

A slowdown or a speedup in response times across experimental conditions can be taken as evidence of online deployment of knowledge. However, response-time difference measures are rarely evaluated on their reliability, and there is no standard practice to estimate it. In this article, we used three open data sets to explore an approach to reliability that is based on mixed-effects modeling and to examine model criticism as an outlier treatment strategy. The results suggest that the model-based approach can be superior but show no clear advantage of model criticism. We followed up these results with a simulation study to identify the specific conditions in which the model-based approach has the most benefits. Researchers who cannot include a large number of items and have a moderate level of noise in their data may find this approach particularly useful. We concluded by calling for more awareness and research on the psychometric properties of measures in the field.

Previous research identified that studying texts in a second language (L2) as opposed to the first (L1) results in substantially weaker recall. We hypothesized that use of advance organizers (AOs) might attenuate this L2 recall cost by supporting L2 users in the construction of more solid memory representations. One hundred Dutch-English bilinguals studied two texts in either L1 or L2, and with or without the help of a mind map. The previously reported L2 cost was replicated, with lower recall scores in L2 relative to L1. Whereas L1 and L2 students were equally aided by AO use, the initial cost dissipated when comparing L2 test scores in the AO condition with those of L1 in the non-AO condition. We therefore conclude that employing AOs does not entirely diminish L2 disadvantages but brings L2 students up to the initial level of L1 students.

Second language (L2) researchers have long acknowledged the role of language anxiety in communication processes, such that learners with greater language anxiety tend to be less willing to engage in communication. However, little research has explored links between L2 speakers’ perceptions of conversation and dynamic measures of anxiety. Therefore, this study measured 60 L2 English speakers’ galvanic skin response (a physiological index of anxiety) during conversation. After the conversation, speakers evaluated themselves and their partner in terms of speech fluency and comprehensibility, engagement, and anxiety, and responded to trait-anxiety and social network questionnaires. Correlational analyses explored relationships between speakers’ trait-anxiety, social network characteristics, self- and peer-perceptions and five levels of physiological response during conversation. Findings revealed that high arousal during interaction was related to speakers’ negative self-perceptions of speech fluency and negative perceptions of their partner’s engagement. Implications are discussed regarding state-anxiety as triggered by partner- or task-specific experiences.

My intent in this short piece is to provide a context for consideration of learner variables in foreign language learning. I first propose a question set outlining the major issues, as I see them, arising in the design of learner-based foreign language learning systems. I then present a simplified three-part design model comprising knowledge considerations (language needs assessment), instructional considerations (learning access alternatives) and learner considerations (characteristics of learners). A review of some recent work in the first two of these prefaces the discussion of the third, learner considerations. A brief state of the art report on research in learner variables is followed by some speculation on next directions in the determination and description of learner variables within a general design model for learning foreign languages.