In this paper the concept of “lexical unit” as proposed by Cruse (1986) is introduced in the context of L2 vocabulary learning to replace the rather vague notion of “word.” In the first part of the paper, this concept is defined in terms of lexical semantics and then applied to the L2 learning task. The second part describes two experimental studies in which the learning of different types of lexical units is examined. In the first study, totally new lexical units are compared with multiword items that are made up of familiar forms. In the second experiment, different types of new senses of familiar forms are compared. Both studies underscore the importance of knowledge of form—but not of previously learned meaning—for the learning of new meanings for familiar forms.

VanPatten (1990) found that L2 learners of Spanish have difficulty simultaneously attending to meaning and form of aural input. This partial replication of VanPatten (1990) addresses the effect of modality on attention to meaning and form by including a written mode and by using a different L2, that is, English as a foreign language. Six tasks were used in this study: (a) listening to the passage for content only, (b) listening for content while attending to the content word inflation, (c) listening for content while attending to the definite article the, (d) reading the passage for content only, (e) reading the passage for content while attending to the content word inflation, and (f) reading for content while attending to the definite article the. Task results in the aural mode mirrored those of VanPatten's original study, but significant differences were not observed for tasks in the written mode. Furthermore, results revealed that listening was more difficult than reading, suggesting that modality is a variable that influences how learners process input. Avenues for future research are discussed.

Willingness to communicate (WTC) has been defined as the intention to initiate communication, given a choice. It was hypothesized that orientations toward language learning as well as social support would influence students' WTC in a second language. Grade 9 students of L2 French immersion, living in a relatively unilingual Anglophone community, participated in the study. WTC was measured in each of four skill areas: speaking, writing, reading, and comprehension. Five orientations or reasons for studying an L2 were examined: travel, job related, friendship with Francophones, personal knowledge, and school achievement. Results showed that endorsement of all five orientations for language learning was positively correlated with WTC both inside and outside the classroom. Results also showed that social support, particularly from friends, was associated with higher levels of WTC outside the classroom but played less of a role inside the classroom. The support of friends was also associated with higher orientations for travel and for friendship with Francophones. Results are discussed in terms of an emerging situated model.

This paper reports on a test of the validity of Pienemann's (1998) Processability Theory (PT). This theory predicts that certain morphological and syntactic phenomena are acquired in a fixed sequence. Three phenomena were chosen for this study: attributive adjective morphology, predicative adjective morphology, and subordinate clause syntax (placement of negation). These phenomena are located at successive developmental stages in the hierarchy predicted by PT. We test whether they actually do appear in this predicted hierarchical order in the L2 of Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish learners. The three languages mentioned are very closely related and have the same adjective morphology and subordinate clause syntax. We can, therefore, treat them as one language for the purposes of this study. Three analyses have been carried out: The first follows Pienemann's theory and is concerned only with syntactic levels; the second is a semantic analysis of the acquisition of number versus that of gender; the third analysis studies the various kinds of mismatches between the inflection of the noun, the controller, and the adjective. The results are the following: The first test supports PT as it has been described by Pienemann. The second analysis shows that there is an acquisitional hierarchy such that number is acquired before gender (in adjectives), and the mismatch analysis raises questions about the fundamental assumptions of the theory.

This book is delightful but needs to be approached with care.

This volume offers the reader a potpourri of papers relating to many different aspects of the teaching of French as a Second Language (FSL) in English Canada. The collection emerged from a course taught by Sharon Lapkin at the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education and makes accessible empirical studies that had previously existed only as unpublished manuscripts or research reports.

Content-based college ESL instruction offers new insights in the implementation of content-based instruction (CBI). Divided into three parts, the collection opens with an overview of CBI theory and pedagogy and ends with the role of technology. In between are chapters on qualitative studies of novice teachers attempting to implement CBI in their classrooms and various disciplinary approaches to CBI. This new collection is a valuable addition to the CBI literature.

This book is an excellent introduction to the field of child language development. It demonstrates the need for both a theory of language development and reliable speech and comprehension data in child language research. As Foster-Cohen states in the preface to the book, the adoption of only a single approach, as opposed to a combination of different approaches, is unlikely to lead to a productive understanding of child language acquisition. The book successfully adopts the perspectives of both the empiricist and the rationalist traditions in its treatment of key issues.

This volume is an excellent introduction to the principles and workings of optimality theory, a relatively new constraint-based framework. The focus is on phonology, which is where the theory thus far has had its greatest impact. A basic understanding of phonology and earlier rule-based derivational theories is assumed. At appropriate points, Kager distinguishes the different claims made by optimality theory and derivational theories. The exercises and suggested readings at the end of each chapter make the book highly suitable as a textbook. The conclusion of each chapter also provides a good summary of the main points. In addition to conventional subject and language indexes, a helpful index of constraints is included with page numbers for where the constraint is defined and used.

Second language development in writing: Measures of fluency, accuracy, and complexity is a technical report that reviews 39 studies examining measures of writing development. It is a comprehensive, lucid, and carefully researched piece of work analyzing an untidy body of literature. This volume is essential reading for anyone doing quantitative research in L2 writing. The studies included in this review are those that have attempted to correlate potential linguistic measures of writing development with writing proficiency, not simply studies that have used the various measures as dependent variables to examine the effects of some instructional treatment. Complicating the picture is the fact that indicators of writing proficiency are varied, as is the case with indicators of oral proficiency (Thomas, 1994). Each of these indicators, including standardized tests, levels in various language programs, and holistic measures, has its own set of problems. For example, of the 16 studies using holistic scales, only half reported interrater or intrarater reliability.

It has been more than a decade since the publication of Paul Nation's Teaching and learning vocabulary (1990), which brought together the findings in lexical acquisition and teaching at the time and has been an invaluable reference and guide to many in the field. However, after years of neglect, vocabulary acquisition has finally come into its own with an explosion of attention and new research, creating a need for an update. Just in time comes Norbert Schmitt's Vocabulary in language teaching (VLT) in the Cambridge Language Education Series.

As a syntactician whose students include TESOL students, I found that many of the questions that Newmeyer addresses in Language form and language function (LFLF) are almost identical to those I am often asked when teaching syntax to those whose goals differ from mine. For this reason alone, LFLF is an important book for anyone interested in the foundations of the linguistic framework they may subscribe to, whether functionalist or formalist.

Stimulated recall is an introspective data-collection procedure in which some “tangible . . . reminder of an event [stimulates] recall of the mental processes in operation during the event itself” (p. 17). The reminders may consist of audio or video recordings, transcriptions, an observer's fieldnotes about the event, and so on.

The author reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on L1 and L2 acquisition in light of the latest version of generative grammar, and uses the results of these studies to formulate an approach to the acquisition of L2 grammatical competence. A certain background in generative grammar is necessary to follow her exposition.

The authors begin this introductory text by posing four major questions for the study of language: what is the nature of language, how do we acquire it, how do we use it in speech production and comprehension, and how is it represented in the brain? These questions also define the orientation of the book, which aims to introduce the reader to the study of linguistics through four interrelated subfields: linguistics proper, developmental linguistics, psycholinguistics, and neurolinguistics. Conspicuously absent from the list, of course, is a fifth fundamental question about language: what is the relationship between language use and social structure? Sociolinguistics is only briefly defined and introduced, and discussion of sociolinguistics throughout the text is limited to the relationship between social structure and language variation and change.

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.

Neuro-neophytes need not be deterred by “ . . . in the somatosensory cortex of rats, the critical period for the reorganization of the barrel cells in response to haptic stimulation from the vibrissae is essentially coterminous with the period when LTP can be induced in those cells” (p. 70). The content of this volume more than compensates for any difficult passages, raising enough issues to generate discussion as well as fuel further research by those who know their ERPs from their ECPs.

Jansen and Liddicoat's volume on teachers as researchers in the FL/SL classroom is an invaluable contribution to the complex and complicated issue of assessing formal language learning environments (i.e., classrooms). The purpose is to provide “an overview of the philosophy which underlies the inclusion of research as a central part of an in-service professional development program” (p. 1) as well as to “give examples of the scope and potential for research conducted by teachers” (ibid.).

The papers in this book were presented at the Symposium on Grammaticalization held in Leiden 1995, with the exception of the paper by Tabor and Traugott. This collection of 11 papers deals with a variety of cases of language change that do not fit perfectly into the models of grammaticalization as a unidirectional process by which open-class elements are weakened and become part of the closed-class set. Briefly described case studies in a variety of languages—from Romance, Germanic, and South East Asian languages to Ancient Greek, Hittite, Basque, and others—allow the reader to peer through the overwhelming number of factors and interactions among factors involved in language change. At the same time, one can also examine the struggle to define and determine which facts do and do not belong to the realm of grammaticalization. To illustrate some of the issues addressed in this book, I will briefly describe some of the papers.

This volume is an extremely comprehensive research report. It speaks principally to language planning, language policy bodies, and curriculum development units in Ireland, as well as to teachers of Irish in primary schools. Although it targets a quite specific audience, it has many elements of interest to policymakers internationally, especially in relation to minority languages, and to researchers in SLA interested in areas such as bilingualism, immersion, the role of instruction, and input in the classroom.