This study was designed to extend previous research on the relationships among intelligibility, perceived comprehensibility, and accentedness. Accent and comprehensibility ratings and transcriptions of accented speech from Cantonese, Japanese, Polish, and Spanish intermediate ESL students were obtained from 26 native English listeners. The listeners were also asked to identify the first language backgrounds of the same talkers and to provide information on their familiarity with the four accents used in this study. When the results of this study were compared with the Munro and Derwing (1995, Language Learning, 45, 73–97) study of learners of high proficiency, speaker proficiency level did not appear to affect the quasi-independent relationships among intelligibility, perceived comprehensibility, and accentedness; however, the relative contributions of grammatical and phonemic errors and goodness of prosody differed somewhat. Ability to identify the speakers' first languages was influenced by familiarity.

This study examines how two types of word knowledge, word associations and grammatical suffix knowledge, change over time both receptively and productively. Ninety-five secondary and postsecondary Japanese students were tested on three word associations and inflectional and derivational suffixes for each of 20 verbs, once near the beginning of their academic year and once near the end. The results showed their average vocabulary gain was 330 words. The students showed rather poor knowledge of the allowable suffixes for the verbs, especially the derivative suffixes. Likewise, the subjects did not show very good mastery of the verbs' word associations. Even for verbs rated as known, the students as a group were able to produce only about 50% of the word associations possible on the test as judged by native speaker norms. Word association knowledge and suffix knowledge were shown to correlate with each other and with total vocabulary size. The subjects overall had from 19 to 25 percentage points more receptive knowledge than productive knowledge.

This article presents a study of corrective feedback and learner uptake (i.e., responses to feedback) in four immersion classrooms at the primary level. Transcripts totaling 18.3 hours of classroom interaction taken from 14 subject-matter lessons and 13 French language arts lessons were analyzed using a model developed for the study and comprising the various moves in an error treatment sequence. Results include the frequency and distribution of the six different feedback types used by the four teachers, in addition to the frequency and distribution of different types of learner uptake following each feedback type. The findings indicate an overwhelming tendency for teachers to use recasts in spite of the latter's ineffectiveness at eliciting student-generated repair. Four other feedback types—elicitation, metalinguistic feedback, clarification requests, and repetition—lead to student-generated repair more successfully and are thus able to initiate what the authors characterize as the negotiation of form.

Three years ago we ushered in a new rubric of SSLA, Replication Studies. We believed—and still do—as did many researchers and consumers of second language and foreign language (S/FL) acquisition research that the problems of reliability and generalizability are best resolved through attempts at replication. We realized that the system of rewards in academe inhibited investment in research that could be viewed as lacking originality. However, we have been gratified by the response from workers in our field who perceived the potential contribution of replication studies and have availed themselves of this new venue.

Many SLA researchers have demonstrated an interest in language pedagogy (LP), yet the relationship between SLA and LP is a problematic one, not so much because of the limitations of SLA itself but because the two disciplines involve different “Discourses” (Gee, 1990). In this paper it is argued that an educational perspective is needed in order to examine how SLA can contribute to LP. Such a perspective suggests ways in which SLA can be appraised in a pedagogically relevant manner and, more importantly, what kinds of applications may be fruitful. It is suggested that relevance is more likely to be achieved if SLA is used to address issues that practitioners nominate as important to them. Different models of application are considered, reflecting different ways of viewing teaching. A behavioral model, according to which teachers implement those behaviors that research has shown to be effective, is rejected. However, SLA can serve as an important source of information that can help to shape practitioners' theories of teaching (a cognitive model). Most importantly, it constitutes a source of “provisional specifications” that practitioners can evaluate in their own contexts of action (an interpretation model). SLA also affords practitioners the means for conducting their own investigations. In short, an educational perspective suggests that for SLA to influence LP, practitioners need assistance in transforming knowledge about L2 acquisition into practice.

The connection between SLA research and second and foreign language (S/FL) teaching is discussed in this paper, from the viewpoint that such a relationship is desirable and that it is advantageous to see it as one mediated by a variety of factors. At the same time, it is asserted that the relationship is presently often weaker than it should be. The conditions under which S/FL language teaching take place are identified as strongly contributing to this state of affairs, though other aspects of SLA research that might have limited its relevance to teaching are also considered. A call is made for empirical studies into the use by teachers of research.

This collection of 28 papers was first presented at the 1994 GURT. The theme of the conference was educational linguistics, crosscultural communication, and global interdependence. The vastness of the theme is reflected in the diversity of the chapter topics. Twelve of 28 deal with curricular issues. Of these, those by Kachru, Nyikos, D. Freeman, van Lier, Loew, and Richards discuss issues and concerns broadly related to the preparation of language teachers. D. Freeman's chapter is worthy of note because it offers an interesting discussion on the various strands of scholarship, which he suggests comprise the knowledge base of language teaching. Six of the 12 chapters center on curricular issues for the language classroom. Matters relating to the teaching of culture are dealt with by Oxford and Bamgbose. Brown discusses “responsive language teaching.” Citkina reports on innovative foreign language methods recently introduced in the Ukraine. A good discussion on computer-mediated communication and its usefulness to the language classroom is offered by Stauffer. Pica provides an excellent overview of the research on task-related learning and an equally useful discussion of its pedagogical implications.

This collection of papers is offered to “serve as a foundation point to illuminate the range of considerations and approaches” in language test construct validation research (p. 12), and it succeeds admirably. The studies represent a useful sample of validation research questions and methods. Research methods are carefully described and motivated, and many chapters have appendices containing original research materials. Discussion and interpretation of the results seem abridged in a few studies, but collectively the chapters present a clear and useful picture of the complexity of construct validation research.

This volume is very much in the North American tradition; it is an edited collection of papers originally presented at a conference (the Twenty-Second University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Linguistics Symposium on Second Language Acquisition). The book represents both the strengths and weaknesses of its origins.

This book is one in a series aimed at introducing teachers with little background in linguistics and applied linguistics to a range of language-related issues. Other books in the series include Introducing Applied Linguistics, Introducing Discourse Analysis, and Introducing Listening. This book by van Lier has the goal of developing “an understanding of the human faculty of language and its role in thinking, learning and social life” (p. xi). Chapter 2, “The Building Blocks of Language,” briefly introduces readers to the phonetic alphabet, assimilation, intonation, morphemes, and syntax. Readers of SSLA (who are not the intended audience) will find, because of its introductory nature, that it does not take them far in their knowledge of language awareness. Teachers new to applied linguistics will find it very accessible and easy to read.

This most recent exposition of Chomsky's ideas about the language faculty strives to reach a deeper level of explanatory adequacy. Rather than the question of “What does knowledge of language consist of?” Chomsky asks the question “Why is the language faculty the way it is?” His basic answer to this question is the following: Two sorts of conditions are imposed on the language faculty, conditions arising from its place in the cognitive architecture “bare output conditions” and conditions of conceptual naturalness such as economy, simplicity, and nonredundancy. Minimalism is thus a call for theoretical simplicity with respect to the constructs used to explain language phenomena: “It is all too easy to succumb to the temptation to offer purported explanation for some phenomenon on the basis of assumptions that are roughly of the order of complexity of what is to be explained. . . . Minimalist demands at least have the merit of highlighting such moves, thus sharpening the question of whether we have a genuine explanation or a restatement of the problem in other terms” (pp. 234–235).

This book, like its four predecessors, consists of invited articles selected from presentations at the previous year's International Conference on Pragmatics and Language Learning. In a review of this length, it would be unreasonable to attempt to do justice to all 18 articles, so I will concentrate on a few of the theoretically oriented discussions and provide a brief overview of the rest.

As part of the Cambridge Language Teaching Library series, this book provides a solid introduction to vocabulary and semantics for teachers and teacher trainers involved in language education. The authors maintain a multidisciplinary perspective on these topics by including both L1 and L2 views and research from linguistics, psychology, anthropology, cognitive science, and education.

Language Contact, Language Conflict treats the increasingly common phenomenon of language contact and the subsequent cultural influences that contact can entail. The collection of papers is the result of a symposium held in Duisburg in March 1992 and is divided into two sections: (a) theoretical linguistic issues and (b) case studies from throughout the world. In the foreword, Hymes admits his skepticism toward the search for universals in linguistics, cognition, and human nature when “so much of anger as of joy is in the details” and, therefore, to preserve humanity, “the complex, emergent configurations of particular languages and ways of life are what need to be understood and shared” (foreword, no page number).