This quasi-experimental study investigated the potential benefits of two corrective feedback techniques (recasts and prompts) for learners of different proficiency levels. Sixty-four students in three intact grade 6 intensive English as a second language classes in the Montreal area were assigned to the two experimental conditions—one received corrective feedback in the form of recasts and the other in the form of prompts—and a control group. The instructional intervention, which was spread over a period of 4 weeks, targeted third-person possessive determiners his and her, a difficult aspect of English grammar for these Francophone learners of English. Participants' knowledge of the target structure was tested immediately before the experimental intervention, once immediately after it ended, and again 4 weeks later through written and oral tasks. All three groups benefited from the instructional intervention, with both experimental groups benefiting the most. Results also indicated that, overall, prompts were more effective than recasts and that the effectiveness of recasts depended on the learners' proficiency. In particular, high-proficiency learners benefited equally from both prompts and recasts, whereas low-proficiency learners benefited significantly more from prompts than recasts.This study is based on the first author's Ph.D. research (Ammar, 2003). We gratefully acknowledge the cooperation of the participating teachers and students. We thank Patsy Lightbown, Roy Lyster, Pavel Trofimovich, and the anonymous SSLA reviewers for their valuable input and feedback on earlier versions of this paper.

Recasts have continued to be the object of intensive empirical and theoretical inquiry following Nicholas, Lightbown, and Spada's (2001) review. The current article identifies a number of problems with this research and the supporting theory. These problems concern the fact that recasts can take many different forms and perform a variety of functions (not all corrective), which makes definition difficult. Also, recasts, when corrective, can vary in terms of whether they constitute an implicit or explicit corrective strategy and in whether they afford negative or positive evidence. Researchers have almost exclusively examined recasts from a cognitive perspective, ignoring their social and sociocognitive aspects. The significance of learner repair following recasts also remains controversial. Little is currently known about the role that the learner's developmental readiness plays in determining whether recasts work for acquisition. Researchers have not clearly distinguished between intensive and extensive recasts, nor have they considered their differential benefits. The acquisitional value of recasts in comparison to other forms of corrective feedback might have been overestimated. This article emphasizes the need for research that examines the specific properties of recasts and the social and instructional conditions in which they occur.We would like to thank various people for their comments on draft versions of this article: Rob Batstone, Shawn Loewen, Alison Mackey, Jenefer Philp, Elaine Tarone, and two anonymous SSLA reviewers.

This study acoustically analyzed the production of single and geminate stops in Japanese by English-speaking children (N = 19) at three different grade levels in a Japanese immersion program. Results show that both their singletons and geminates were significantly longer than those of Japanese monolinguals and the bilinguals' immersion teachers, but all of the immersion groups have acquired the contrast between the two types of stop. This finding supports Flege's (1995) hypothesis that a phonetic category established for second language sounds by a bilingual might differ from that of a monolingual. Additionally, 52 native speakers of Japanese rated the contrast between the two stops produced by all of the bilingual children and a subset of the monolingual children. The accent ratings suggest that the contrast made by the immersion children was not nativelike despite some individual differences in their performance and that there was no statistical difference in accent ratings across the grade levels. The degree of the contrast correlated fairly highly with the closure duration ratio of geminates to singletons.Part of this article was presented at the 2000 AAAL Conference, Vancouver, British Columbia and the 2001 AAAL Conference, St. Louis, MO. I would like to thank Dr. R. Campbell, Dr. M. Celce-Murcia, Dr. S. Guion, Dr. S. Iwasaki, and Dr. S.-A. Jun as well as the anonymous SSLA reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. I am also grateful to the children and their teachers for their participation in this study, without whom it would not have been possible.

COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS, SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION, AND FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING. Michel Achard and Susanne Niemeier (Eds.). Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 2004. Pp. vi + 283. 98.00€, $118.00 cloth.

Achard and Niemeier “hope that the different chapters in this volume will help establish the cognitive linguistics model as a valuable framework for the investigation of second language learning and teaching phenomena and provide the methodology to further extend the research” (p. 9). Not all of the chapters included realize that hope.

STRUCTURED INPUT: GRAMMAR INSTRUCTION FOR THE ACQUISITION-ORIENTED CLASSROOM. Andrew P. Farley. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2005. Pp. vii + 123. $51.56 paper.

This volume for second language teachers builds on two principles of structured input (SI; VanPatten, 2004): the primacy of meaning principle and the first noun principle. After an overview of SI, Farley provides chapter-length explanations of teaching activities based on the two SI principles and concludes with a chapter on recent SI research. The three core SI activity-preparation chapters are organized around (a) an introduction to the SI principle focused on in the chapter, (b) a research review, (c) examples from various languages, (d) “principles in practice” to guide teachers in writing SI activities, (e) sample studies, and (f) suggested readings. The technique recommended for activities involves the creation of controlled tasks that limit information available to students so that only one grammatical point is salient. For example, an activity on English subject-verb agreement requires the learner to select the correct present tense verb for a given subject; one singular subject (“Sarah McLachlan”) and one plural subject (“Bono and the Edge”) are followed by only two choices: one with a verb in the singular (“travels all over the world”) and one with a verb in the plural (“play the guitar”). The logic of this activity is that language learners look to meaning first and, therefore, often overlook form, so activities can force focus on form by limiting content and restricting grammatical choice. (My own experience of this type of grammar drill is that students have a 50% chance of getting the correct answer without having to think about either meaning or form.)

THE ACQUISITION OF FRENCH IN DIFFERENT CONTEXTS: FOCUS ON FUNCTIONAL CATEGORIES. Philippe Prévost and Johanne Paradis (Eds.). Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2004. Pp. 381. $132.00 cloth.

This collection of essays explores, in a generative framework, the acquisition of functional categories in French across four “acquisition contexts” (p. 1): first language (L1) acquisition, second language (L2) acquisition, bilingual L1 acquisition, and L1 acquisition by people with specific language impairment (SLI).

ISSUES IN THE STUDY OF PIDGIN AND CREOLE LANGUAGES. Claire Lefebvre. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2004. Pp. xvi + 358. $119.00 cloth.

This volume is a collection of 10 articles that Lefebvre has written since the publication of her 1998 volume, Creole genesis and the acquisition of grammar: The case of Haitian Creole. With the exception of the first chapter (a brief introduction) and the third chapter (a summary of her relexification hypothesis), the chapters of this volume consist of articles that were originally published elsewhere. For that reason, each chapter essentially stands on its own. Consequently, the volume suffers from some unavoidable overlap and, more significantly, a lack of coherence.

METHODS OF RESEARCH ON TEACHING THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS: THE METHODOLOGY CHAPTERS FROM THE HANDBOOK OF RESEARCH ON TEACHING THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS (2nd ed.). James Flood, Diane Lapp, James R. Squire, and Julie M. Jensen (Eds.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2005. Pp. viii + 337. $39.95 paper.

This text combines the research methodology chapters from the second edition of the Handbook of research on teaching the English language arts (Flood, Lapp, Squire, & Jensen, 2003) to provide readers with a concise account of contemporary research methodologies in the English language arts (ELA). The volume begins with a general overview of ELA research for teachers before addressing more specific methodological topics, which include multiple literacies, empirical research, longitudinal studies and literacy development, case studies, ethnography, teacher research, synthesis research, and fictive representation. The volume concludes with a summary chapter that speculates on current methodological issues and future directions for researching the ELA.

HANDBOOK OF RESEARCH IN SECOND LANGUAGE TEACHING AND LEARNING. Eli Hinkel (Ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2005. Pp. xxii + 1144. $260.00 cloth, $99.95 paper.

Hinkel's ambitious tome is the newest addition to handbooks in the field of applied linguistics. The volume is composed of eight sections: “Important Social Contexts in Research on Second Language Teaching and Learning,” “Methods in Second Language Research,” “Applied Linguistics and Second Language Research,” “Second Language Processes and Development,” “Methods and Curricula in Second Language Teaching,” “Second Language Testing and Assessment,” “Identity, Culture, and Critical Pedagogy in Second Language Learning and Teaching,” and “Language Planning and Policy and Language Rights.” Each section includes an introduction and 3–12 chapters written by researchers who are well known in their respective areas.

UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR IN SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: A HISTORY. Margaret Thomas. London: Routledge, 2004. Pp. xiii + 262. $105.00 cloth.

As the title of this volume indicates, Thomas traces the history of ideas behind the contemporary concepts of Universal Grammar (UG) and SLA as well as their coming together in contemporary approaches to linguistics and language acquisition.

THE NEUROBIOLOGY OF LEARNING: PERSPECTIVES FROM SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION. John H. Schumann, Sheila E. Crowell, Nancy E. Jones, Namhee Lee, Sara Ann Schuchert, and Lee Alexandra Wood. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2004. Pp. xiii + 212. $59.95 cloth, $34.50 paper.

This volume is an attempt to relate neuroscience research to cognitive metaphors (e.g., auditory loop, Universal Grammar [UG], fossilization) used by SLA researchers and psycholinguists to describe language acquisition. The volume consists of six chapters, originally master's theses and PhD qualifying papers, and an introduction and conclusion by Schumann. The chapters review literature that pertains to the neurobiology of six subtopics: aptitude, motivation, procedural memory, declarative memory, memory consolidation, and attention. In the preface, Schumann suggests that the purpose of the volume is “to promote a neurobiology of language that starts with the brain and moves to behavior” (p. xi), although he acknowledges one page later that “empirical research on the hypothesized mechanisms may be some time off” (p. xii). The volume aims to convince the intended readership, SLA researchers who might know little or no neurobiology, that investing time in the study of the neuroscience of learning is critical to the field's progression.

SECOND LANGUAGE WRITING RESEARCH: PERSPECTIVES ON THE PROCESS OF KNOWLEDGE CONSTRUCTION. Paul Kei Matsuda and Tony Silva (Eds.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2005. Pp. xv + 254, $79.95 cloth, $29.95 paper.

This collection of articles, edited by Matsuda and Silva, is a valuable resource for both new and established researchers in the field of second language (L2) writing. The main goal of the text is to give readers insight into the messy realities of conducting research in this area by discussing issues that are not included in introductory books on research methodology. The volume is divided into three parts: “Research as Situated Knowledge Construction,” “Conceptualizing L2 Writing Research,” and “Collecting and Analyzing Data.”

DISCOURSE IN THE PROFESSIONS: PERSPECTIVES FROM CORPUS LINGUISTICS. Ulla Connor and Thomas A. Upton (Eds.). Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2004. Pp. vi + 334. $119.00 cloth.

Whereas general corpora have been used successfully by linguists and language practitioners for more than 40 years now, corpora that capture the language of particular discourse communities are only recently becoming the focus of attention. The chapters in the present collection, edited by Connor and Upton, respond to the growing research interest in academic and professional discourses and illustrate the profitable use of specialized corpora in linguistics and in the learning and teaching of English for academic purposes (EAP) and English for specific purposes (ESP).

LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT AND PROGRAMME EVALUATION. Brian K. Lynch. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003. Pp. ix + 182. $34.00 paper.

In this slim volume, Lynch offers a unique contribution of interest for language educators and of particular utility for students who are new to the domain. By integrating the treatment of assessment and evaluation and by exploring issues in design, development, analysis, and ethics, the volume effectively introduces readers to key concerns in these oft-confounded processes. Additionally, although SLA is not addressed directly, SLA researchers might take interest in Lynch's treatment of paradigms and their role in applied work.

LANGUAGE, LITERACY, AND POWER IN SCHOOLING. Teresa L. McCarty (Ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2005. Pp. xxvi + 317. $34.50 paper.

The ways in which macro factors of global socioeconomic power shape micro language/literacy interactions in education have increasingly gained attention in applied linguistics research. This volume, which emerged from an American Anthropological Association symposium in 1999, sets out to examine this dialectic through the lens of critical ethnographic research. In her introduction, McCarty draws on the new literacy studies paradigm to challenge dichotomizing discourses—oral versus literate, literate versus illiterate, monolingual versus bilingual—as well as current calls for standardization, homogeneity, and universalist approaches to language and literacy education. Instead, the editor situates the volume within a social practices framework, which emphasizes the multiplicity and variability of literacy practices shaped by context, power, culture, and purpose.

WORLDS OF WRITTEN DISCOURSE: A GENRE-BASED VIEW. Vijay K. Bhatia. New York: Continuum, 2004. Pp. xvii + 228. $49.95 paper.

In this volume, Bhatia discusses multiple aspects of written discourse as produced in the real world by focusing not just on academic genres but on genres from professional and institutional contexts as well. His consideration of disciplinary variation in genres, relationships across genres, appropriation of generic resources as seen in hybrid genres, and the nature of generic integrity has led to an extension of genre theory not “constrained by the nature and design of its applications” (p. xiv) that is discussed here. In addition to this development of genre theory, this well-crafted volume provides a multiperspective, multidimensional model of genre analysis.

NEW INSIGHTS INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING. Kees van Esch and Oliver St. John (Eds.). Berlin: Peter Lang, 2004. Pp. 239. $47.95 paper.

Although this work constitutes Volume 9 of the series Foreign language teaching in Europe, the reader should take literally neither the latter geographical indication nor the title's claim to novelty. Whereas the first half of the dozen authors are American and the second half European, the topics largely cut across the oceanic divide. As for the topics, they correspond to major themes in the field of second and foreign language education over the span of the last two decades.

THIRD LANGUAGE LEARNERS: PRAGMATIC PRODUCTION AND AWARENESS. Maria Pilar Safont Jordá. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters, 2005. Pp. viii + 184. $89.95 cloth, $39.95 paper.

This volume reports on a study of pragmatic instruction among third language learners in a foreign language (FL) context. Over half of the volume is devoted to laying out the theoretical background; the rest focuses on an empirical study. Chapter 1 presents an overview of the field of third language acquisition that points out differences between it and SLA research. Especially interesting is the literature review, which presents research conducted in Spain on third language acquisition. This is followed by a comprehensive look at bilingualism. Chapter 2 offers an outline of research in the field of interlanguage pragmatics, organized around three main approaches: relevance theory, politeness theory, and speech-act theory. An argument for the importance of pragmatic instruction is also developed. The chapter ends with a discussion of relevant research on the speech act of requesting (particularly the production of requests) by FL learners. Chapter 3 closes the theoretical framework with an in-depth presentation of the Valencian community and its language learning and use. This is a very interesting chapter for readers unfamiliar with the language richness of this community.

INVESTIGATIONS IN INSTRUCTED SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION. Alex Housen and Michel Pierrard (Eds.). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2005. Pp. ix + 568. $165.20 cloth.

This volume is a compilation of revised and expanded papers from the 2004 Colloquium on “Instructed Second Language Learning/L'appropriation d'une langue second en milieu guidé.” Nearly all of the assembled papers report on empirical studies that investigate second language (L2) production or acquisition by language learners in a range of formal instructional contexts, from elementary school immersion classes to adult and university foreign language courses. Following the editors' introduction, the 17 subsequent chapters are organized into four sections: (a) investigating cognitive and processing mechanisms in instructed SLA, (b) investigating the role and effects of form-focused instruction, (c) investigating the role and effects of interaction and communication-focused instruction, and (d) comparing the effects of instructed and naturalistic SLA contexts. Space constraints limit a thorough discussion of each of the papers, but a few noteworthy examples from each section will be discussed here.

MEANING IN LANGUAGE: AN INTRODUCTION TO SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS (2nd ed.). Alan Cruse. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp. xiii + 441. $29.95 paper.

This volume, which has been only moderately revised from the first edition (a couple of important exceptions will be mentioned later), is divided into four parts. The first is titled “Fundamental Notions” and consists of four chapters: “Introduction,” which introduces the subbranches of the field (e.g., lexical semantics, grammatical semantics, linguistic pragmatics) and its relations to other fields; “Logical Matters,” which introduces basic concepts like proposition, entailment, and scope; “Types and Dimensions of Meaning,” which concerns aspects of descriptive (or referential) meaning such as vagueness and specificity as well as nondescriptive meaning (associative and social meanings); and “Compositionality,” a brief discussion of this fundamental notion and some of the difficulties associated with it.