The title of this special issue, Gesture and SLA: Toward an Integrated Approach, stems in large part from the idea known as integrationism, principally set forth by Harris (2003, 2005), which posits that it is time to “demythologize” linguistics, moving away from the “orthodox exponents” that have idealized the notion of language. The integrationist approach intends a view that focuses on communication—that is, language in use, language as a “fact of life” (Harris, 2003, p. 50). Although not all gesture studies embrace an integrationist view—indeed, the field applies numerous theories across various disciplines—it is nonetheless true that to study gesture is to study what has traditionally been called paralinguistic modes of interaction, with the paralinguistic label given on the assumption that gesture is not part of the core meaning of what is rendered linguistically. However, arguably, most researchers within gesture studies would maintain just the opposite: The studies presented in this special issue reflect a view whereby gesture is regarded as a central aspect of language in use, integral to how we communicate (make meaning) both with each other and with ourselves.

Donald (2001) argued that mimesis is fundamental to communication and culture. The basic level of mimetic action is mime—as found, for example, in the imaginative, expressive play of children, who typically imitate aspects of the world around them, including the actions of their parents, and pretend to be those they will become. Mimesis has a prominent position in the lives of children in relation to language acquisition as well; for example, Nelson (1996) found that mimetic portrayals of events, such as in play, largely precede language and are key to its development. According to Donald, mimesis is also central to tribal identity (culture), in how emotions are expressed and understood. This article argues that mimesis plays two prominent roles in acquiring another language. The first relates to how people materialize aspects of their second language discourse through gesture as a means of making meaning for themselves as well as for interlocutors. This perspective is grounded in the Vygotskian branch of Soviet psychology, particularly the work of Gal'perin (1989). The so-called tribal aspect of mimesis (identity) in the form of gesture is also taken up in relation to SLA, again from a sociocultural perspective. Overall, it is argued that our material being impacts the way we live and learn and that sound theories of SLA will need to take this into account.

Within sociocultural theory, and particularly from a Vygotskian perspective, private speech refers to speech-for-the-self, as opposed to social speech. Private speech is a crucial window on how language mediates and regulates thought processes (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006). In the case of second language (L2) learning, the use of private speech, whether in the first language (L1) or L2, facilitates engagement with the L2 in relation to personal learning needs (e.g., studying for an exam, the task in the current study). Another, more recent area of investigation within L2 learning and sociocultural theory focuses on how forms of gesture mediate and regulate thought as well. This study examines how these forms of mediation operate in a dialogic capacity. Seven adult Korean-English bilingual students at a North American university were video- and audio-recorded during 3 h of solitary exam preparation in a private room. In microdiscourse analyses, participants are shown to use gestures together with private speech as a form of dialogic interaction with the self in cognitive activities for self-regulation.

This study investigates the interface between speech and gesture in second language (L2) narration within Slobin's (2003) thinking-for-speaking (TFS) framework as well as with respect to McNeill's (1992, 2005) growth point (GP) hypothesis. Specifically, our interest is in whether speakers shift from a first language (L1) to a L2 TFS pattern as manifested in the GP of narrations they produce. The data are drawn from the narrations of an animated cartoon story produced by advanced L2 speakers of Korean (L1 English) and L2 speakers of English (L1 Korean). Korean is a verb-framed language (Talmy, 2000) that conflates path of motion on the verb and expresses manner, if at all, through separate lexical items, onomatopoeia, or gesture alone. English is a satellite-framed language (Talmy, 2000) that encodes manner on verbs, expresses path through satellite phrases, and synchronizes manner-path conflated gestures with manner verbs when manner is in focus. The typological difference between the languages presents significant challenges for the L2 speakers, who, despite their high level of proficiency in their respective L2s, appear to retain their L1 TFS patterns.

Whereas most research in SLA assumes the relationship between the first language (L1) and the second language (L2) to be unidirectional, this study investigates the possibility of a bidirectional relationship. We examine the domain of manner of motion, in which monolingual Japanese and English speakers differ both in speech and gesture. Parallel influences of the L1 on the L2 and the L2 on the L1 were found in production from native Japanese speakers with intermediate knowledge of English. These effects, which were strongest in gesture patterns, demonstrate that (a) bidirectional interaction between languages in the multilingual mind can occur even with intermediate proficiency in the L2 and (b) gesture analyses can offer insights on interactions between languages beyond those observed through analyses of speech alone.We gratefully acknowledge technical and financial support from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO; MPI 56-384, The Dynamics of Multilingual Processing, awarded to M. Gullberg and P. Indefrey). We would also like to thank two anonymous SSLA reviewers for their useful comments.

THE SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION OF SPANISH GENDER AGREEMENT: THE EFFECTS OF LINGUISTIC VARIABLES ON ACCURACY.Irma Alarcón. Munich: Lincom Europa, 2006. Pp. vi + 130. $52.00 paper.

This volume, a published dissertation, presents an empirical investigation into Spanish gender agreement among second language (L2) learners whose first language (L1) is English. Although the acquisition of grammatical gender has recently been the focus of many studies within the generative paradigm (cf. White, Valenzuela, Kozlowska-Macgregor, & Leung, 2004), Alarcón adopts a psycholinguistic approach to determine how certain linguistic variables contribute to learners' accuracy in this area of grammatical processing. In order to limit the scope of investigation, the author focuses on gender agreement between subject nouns and predicate adjectives.

AGE IN L2 ACQUISITION AND TEACHING.Christián Abello-Contesse, Rubén Chacón-Beltrán, M. Dolores López-Jiménez, and M. Mar Torreblanca-López (Eds.). Bern: Peter Lang, 2006. Pp. 220. $45.95 paper.

This volume deals with issues related to the effects of age in foreign language learning, immersion programs, and situations in which parents are trying to raise their children as bilinguals. The critical period hypothesis (CPH) receives a great deal of attention throughout the volume, and some attention is also given to more general effects of maturation that might occur independently of any critical period. A recurring thread throughout the work is the authors' reaction to the popular belief that children are superior to adults in their ability to acquire languages. Many of the chapters that address this claim point to research that shows that children's advantage is restricted to their ultimate levels of attainment in the target language, whereas adults quite often outperform children at particular stages of acquisition. Several of the authors also refer to empirical research that shows little or no advantage to having children begin their foreign language studies prior to adolescence.

SUBJECTIVITY IN A SECOND LANGUAGE: CONVEYING THE EXPRESSION OF SELF.Alan J. E. Wolf. Bern: Peter Lang, 2006. Pp. 248. $52.95 paper.

Wolf's monograph, based on his dissertation, examines ways in which native and nonnative speakers of French use subjectivity markers in personal narratives and in argumentative discourse. This inquiry has two main aims: to identify markers of subjectivity and to see how native and nonnative speakers might differ in the use of these markers.

THE ACQUISITION OF THE CHINESEBA-CONSTRUCTION.Hang Du. Munich: Lincom Europa, 2006. Pp. 185. 64.20€.

Ubiquitous but elusive, the Chinese ba-construction has attracted a great deal of attention in Chinese linguistics, but its acquisition by second language (L2) learners has not been investigated systematically. This monograph, based on the author's doctoral dissertation, presents an interesting and innovative treatment of the acquisition of the Chinese ba-construction by native speakers of English. The volume fills a gap in the literature by investigating learners' sensitivity to the constraints on nominal phrases with ba (ba-NP) and verbal phrases with ba (ba-VP). An example of a ba-construction is given in (1), where the functional morpheme ba precedes the object, which, in turn, precedes the verb:

TEACHER EDUCATION IN CALL.Philip Hubbard and Mike Levy (Eds.). Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2006. Pp. xxiii + 113. $24.50 paper.

Hubbard and Levy have compiled this expansive edited volume on teacher education in computer-assisted language learning (CALL) as part of Spada and Hulstjin's “Language Learning and Teaching” series. This volume, which compiles theoretical and practical solutions as well as data-driven arguments for the inclusion of CALL in teacher training curricula, is not for teachers who want to learn about CALL; it is aimed at professionals who provide, or want to provide, CALL training to language teachers.

THE COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE OF SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION.Marianne Gullberg and Peter Indefrey (Eds.). Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. Pp. v + 348. $39.95 paper.

This edited collection consists of a selection of conference papers that deal with the brain and SLA. The areas of focus are age and proficiency levels related to the critical period issue, ultimate attainment, and the regulation of two languages in a brain. The main chapters review the evidence in these areas and are each followed by a critical commentary.

BRIDGING DISCOURSES IN THE ESL CLASSROOM: STUDENTS, TEACHERS, AND RESEARCHERS.Pauline Gibbons. New York: Continuum, 2006. Pp. 256. $60.00 paper.

In English-speaking countries with large numbers of immigrants, like the United States and Australia, children from non-English-speaking families are very likely to encounter difficulties in learning English and content knowledge simultaneously. In particular, one of the greatest challenges for English as a second language (ESL) children lies in their tendency to use everyday language (i.e., language acquired in informal situations, such as playing) in academic settings. Gibbons' work presents a research project that examines real-life content-based classroom interactions in which ESL children's English and content knowledge learning are facilitated. It makes an invaluable contribution to the effort to help ESL learners make a successful transition from everyday informal language to specialized academic registers.

EDUCATING FOR ADVANCED FOREIGN LANGUAGE CAPACITIES: CONSTRUCTS, CURRICULUM, INSTRUCTION, ASSESSMENT.Heidi Byrnes, Heather D. Weger-Guntharp, and Katherine Sprang (Eds.). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2007. Pp. x + 208. $44.95 paper.

The contents of this volume are drawn from papers presented at the 2005 Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics (GURT), the theme of which was educating for advanced language proficiency. In her introduction, Byrnes notes that despite the obvious need for advanced foreign language capacities and the clear limitations of current instructional practices, the advanced learner is often overlooked in SLA theory and research and continues to receive inadequate pedagogical attention. To help rectify this situation, the conference conveners brought together leading cognitive linguistic, systemic-functional, and sociocultural researchers in order to “specify the construct of advancedness in theory and research and for laying out broad parameters for curriculum, instruction, and assessment in support of the acquisition of advanced levels of L2 ability” (p. 3). Each of the 12 chapters is provocative, and the volume, overall, is of excellent quality. Researchers and educators alike will find this work profoundly useful.

THEORIES IN SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: AN INTRODUCTION.Bill VanPatten and Jessica Williams (Eds.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2007. Pp. xiv + 261. $32.50 paper.

This volume consists of chapters contributed by a group of SLA experts whose work has had a significant influence on the field of contemporary SLA research. Its goal is to provide readers with accessible synopses of various approaches to the study of later language development. Twelve chapters define language either as a computational system that exists beyond general human cognition or as a dynamic system that links the two inextricably. All of them nonetheless presuppose that adult SLA is distinct in that its initial state is constitutive of a completed grammatical system. Each chapter, except for the introduction and the conclusion, follows the same format: introduction of the theory or approach, verification of its validity, discussion of its limitations, an illustrative study, and discussion of the theory's relevance to some of the SLA issues identified by VanPatten and Williams in the introduction. Each chapter ends with discussion questions and further suggested reading.

RAISING CHILDREN BILINGUALLY THROUGH THE ‘ONE PARENT-ONE LANGUAGE’ APPROACH: A CASE STUDY OF JAPANESE MOTHERS IN THE AUSTRALIAN CONTEXT.Takeuchi. Bern: Peter Lang, 2006. Pp. xv + 385. $68.95 paper.

Research on child language acquisition within bilingual families adhering to the “One Parent-One Language” (OPOL) approach has focused on parental attitudes, language status (Romaine, 1989), the quantity of language input (Clyne, 1987; Schlyter, 1993), and the quality of parent-child interactions (Dopke, 1992; Lanza, 1997). Masae Takeuchi's work offers a valuable overview of this past research and reports on her own dissertation study of 25 OPOL families in Australia. Takeuchi adds to the growing body of data demonstrating that the quality of interactions between the minority-language-speaking parent and the child is often a crucial variable in determining the success of the OPOL approach in raising a child with active knowledge of more than one language.

LE LANGAGE PREFABRIQUE EN FRANÇAIS L2: ETUDE ACQUISITIONNELLE ET COMPARATIVE [PREFABRICATED LANGUAGE IN L2 FRENCH: AN ACQUISITIONAL AND COMPARATIVE STUDY].Fanny Forsberg. Stockholm: Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of French, Italian and Classical Languages, 2006. Pp. iv + 183 + CD-ROM. Available for free download at http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-1347.

In this dissertation, Forsberg describes the acquisition of formulaic sequences (séquences préfabriquées or “prefabs”) among Swedish learners of French ranging from beginners to near-native speakers. After a detailed discussion of existing models, Forsberg gives her own definition of prefabs, one that is contextually based and accommodates second language (L2) learners. She adopts and extends Erman and Warren's (2000) model for her own study using six categories: lexical (coup de foudre “love at first sight,” c'est la vie “that's life”), grammatical (être en train de “to be in the process of”), discursive (textual: c'est “it is,” il y a “there is”; own speech management: je pense “I think”; and interactive: bien sûr “of course”), interlanguage or “idiosyncratic” (ils n'ont pas la morale “they aren't in good spirits”), and situational (je m'appelle “my name is”). Interview materials from the Stockholm-based French learner corpus InterFra as well as materials collected by the author for very advanced and native-speaker groups are used for the study. There are four groups: (a) six high school students; (b) six university-level beginners; (c) six very advanced learners, most of whom have spent several years in Paris; and (d) six native speakers.

GOALS FOR ACADEMIC WRITING: ESL STUDENTS AND THEIR INSTRUCTORS.Alister Cumming (Ed.). Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2006. Pp. xii + 204. $42.95 paper.

In universities throughout the world, faculty engage in discussions related to the writing performance of their students—with many concerned about challenges second language (L2) students face in achieving competence in academic writing tasks. Yet, most studies in the field of L2 writing focus on a single area of concern within the learning and teaching spectrum; the collective results of these explorations must often be pieced together by an individual who reviews a large number of separate studies. Cumming's edited volume stems from a more ambitious and data-rich approach; its chapters derive from a 2-year project in which the contributors investigated and compared the learning and teaching goals of several dozen L2 writers and a number of their teachers as the students moved from an intensive English as a second language (ESL) program in Canada to their first year at several Canadian universities.

Publications received.