Series editors' preface

Summary

The place of grammar in foreign and second language learning and teaching has long been a hotly debated issue in applied linguistics. Opinions vary as to the merits of different linguistic theories, the relationships between theories and pedagogical grammars, and the derivability of one from the other. In addition, the findings from second language acquisition research have raised questions about psycholinguistic constraints on the learnability of any grammar, the scope of rule-based and instance learning, the role of positive and negative evidence, and relationships among implicit and explicit learning, memory, and knowledge.

These are some of the issues addressed in this collection of original papers, Perspectives on Pedagogical Grammar, edited by Terence Odlin. The book includes work by individuals with extensive experience in linguistics, applied linguistics, and language teaching, with most authors drawing on their expertise in two or all three of these areas. The contributors, who work on four continents, reflect the diversity of theoretical orientations and positions on the issues that characterize the field today. They have dealt with what is often quite complex material in an accessible way, and they have shown once again how the flow of insights between linguists and language teaching is rarely unidirectional.

The Cambridge Applied Linguistics Series publishes theoretically motivated, data-based work in applied linguistics, especially work which relates theory to practice. That orientation is reflected in this book, which moves from approaches to linguistic analysis for pedagogical purposes to matters of classroom implementation and evaluation.