The book concerns theoretical, interdisciplinary and methodological issues in L2 acquisition research. It gives an accurate and up-to-date overview of high quality work currently in progress in research methodology, processing, principles and parameters theory, phonology, the bilingual lexicon, input and instruction. The volume will have the purpose of a handbook for teachers, students and researchers in the area of second language acquisition. The aim is to provide the reader with an acquisition perspective on processes of second and foreign language learning.

This edited book brings together ten empirical papers reporting original studies investigating different facets of individual variation second language learning and teaching. The individual difference factors covered include, among others, motivation, self, anxiety, emotions, willingness to communicate, beliefs, age, and language learning strategies. What is especially important, some of the contributions to the volume offer insights into intricate interplays of these factors while others attempt to relate them to learning specific target language subsystems or concrete instructional options. All the chapters also include tangible implications for language pedagogy. The book is of interest to both researchers examining the role of individual variation in second language learning and teaching, teacher trainers, graduate and doctoral students in foreign languages departments, as well as practitioners wishing to enhance the effectiveness of second language instruction in their classrooms.

Methods in current instructed second language acquisition research range from laboratory experiments to ethnography using non-obtrusive participant observation, from cross-sectional designs to longitudinal case studies. Many different types of data serve as the basis for analysis, including reaction times measurements, global test scores, paper and pencil measures, introspective comments, grammaticality judgements, as well as textual data (elicited or naturalistic, oral or written, relating to comprehension or production). Some studies rely on extensive quantification of data, while others may favour a more qualitative and hermeneutic analytic approach. Many of these issues and methods are exemplified by the contributions to this volume. Data-based studies included here deal with the acquisition of specific linguistic phenomena (e.g. verb and noun morphology, lexicon, clause structures) in a range of target languages (e.g. English, French, German, Russian) from a variety of settings involving different instructional approaches (e.g. traditional foreign language classes, immersion classes, intensive ESL classes, content and language integrated language classes). Collectively, the chapters in this book illustrate the productivity and diversity of current research on instructed second language acquisition. As such they serve as a valuable resource for researchers in SLA, psycholinguistics, linguistics, and language education.

This book provides an overview of affective individual variables that are considered relevant for second language learning and outlines a novel approach to researching them. In the first part of the book, the most prominent concepts and theories in connection with affective individual variables and tasks are discussed, followed by a literature review of the most significant empirical studies conducted on the reviewed individual variables with the help of tasks. The second part of the monograph reports the findings of a research project which investigated the relationships of motivation, emotions, flow experiences, and self-efficacy beliefs of secondary school students studying English in Hungary. These constructs are examined at two levels: in connection with learners’ English classes in general and in connection with a particular language task, thus linking task performance measures to specific affective states experienced while performing a task and their general trait versions reported in connection with the language classes. Teacher interviews provide further insights into the language tasks used by the teachers of the students taking part in the study and their affective correlates. The book offers multi-level interpretations of the results, puts forward pedagogical implications, and delineates further research directions.

This book brings together research that makes use of tasks to examine oral interaction, written production, vocabulary and reading, lexical innovation and pragmatics in different formal language learning contexts and in different languages (English, French, German, Italian and Spanish). It will be of interest to professionals and students working in SLA research and language pedagogy.

This edited volume represents state of the field research linking cognition and second language acquisition, reflecting the experience of the learner when engaged in noticing, input/output processing, retrieval, and even attrition of target forms. Contributions are both theoretical and practical, describing a variety of L1, L2 and L3 combinations from around the world as observed in spoken, written, and computer-mediated contexts. The book relates conditions of language, task, medium or environment to how learners make decisions about language, with discussions about the application or efficacy of these conditions on linguistic success and development, and pedagogical implications.

Volume III of the Handbook of Research in Second Language Teaching and Learning, like Volumes I and II, is a comprehensive, state-of-the-art overview of current research into social contexts of second language (L2)/foreign language (FL) teaching and learning; language policy; curriculum; types of instruction; incremental language skills such as listening, speaking, reading, writing, vocabulary, and grammar; international communication; pragmatics; assessment and testing. It differs from earlier volumes in its main purpose—to provide a more in-depth discussion and detailed focus on the development of the essential language skills required for any type of communication: speaking, listening, reading, vocabulary, grammar, and writing. Volume III preserves continuity with previous volumes in its coverage of all the classical areas of research in L2/FL teaching and learning and applied linguistics, but rather than offering a historical review of disciplinary traditions, it explores innovations and new directions of research, acknowledges the enormous complexity of teaching and learning the essential language abilities, and offers a diversity of perspectives. Chapter authors are all leading authorities in their disciplinary areas. What’s new in Volume III? Updates the prominent areas of research, including the sub-disciplines addressed in Volumes I and II, and represents the disciplinary mainstays Considers and discusses perspectives held by different schools of thought on the what, the how, and the why of teaching foundational language skills, including theories, pedagogical principles, and their implementation in practice Captures new and ongoing developments and trends in the key areas of L2/FL teaching and learning, and innovative research topics that have gained substantial recognition in current publications, including the role of corpora, technology, and digital literacy in L2/FL teaching and learning Examines new trends in language pedagogy and research, such as an increased societal emphasis on teaching academic language for schooling, somewhat contradictory definitions of literacy, and the growing needs for instruction in intercultural communication.

In this volume, language researchers studying morphosyntax, the lexicon, and pragmatics share and evaluate methods of eliciting and analyzing language production in various populations and settings. For all language researchers, applied and theoretical.

This revision of our best-selling text in SLA will incorporate suggestions made by previous adopters of the book, as well as including new developments in theoretical linguistics, cognitive psychology, and social interaction.

Researchers have looked into the role of individual differences in second language learning and found that differences between learners in areas such as language aptitude, language learning motivation and exposure to the language influence second language learning. Most of this research concerned adults. Far fewer studies have addressed the role of individual differences in second language learning of young learners. As second language learning programmes tend to start earlier than before and children are nowadays frequently exposed to a foreign language in social settings such as online games and social media, studying the role of individual differences in young learners can contribute both to SLA-theories and to evidence-based L2 education. This book discusses recent findings concerning the role of individual differences in language learning in young learners. The chapters in the book concern different topics linked to internal individual differences such as language aptitude, motivation, attitude and external individual differences such as exposure and type of instruction, the relative contribution of internal and external factors to language learning, and the interplay between the two types of individual differences.