It has been observed that there is a strong association between the inherent (lexical) aspect of verbs and the acquisition of tense-aspect morphology (the aspect hypothesis; Andersen & Shirai, 1994). To investigate why such an association is observed, this study examined the influence of inherent aspect and learners' first language (L1) on the acquisition of Japanese imperfective aspect by using two tasks—an acceptability judgment test and an oral picture description task—with two groups of second language learners of Japanese: 26 native speakers (NSs) of English, which has the obligatory progressive, and 35 NSs of languages that have no obligatory progressive marking (German and Slavic languages). The results from the acceptability judgment test support the aspect hypothesis in that, regardless of L1, the imperfective marker -te i-ru was strongly associated with activity verbs for lower proficiency learners. However, the results from the oral task did not support the prediction, in that lower proficiency L1 nonprogressive learners did not show any such preference. The results suggest that L1 plays a role in the formation of the acquisition pattern predicted by the aspect hypothesis, but that given the complex interaction with task types and proficiency, L1 transfer cannot be the sole reason for the predicted association in the acquisition of Japanese -te i-(ru). It is argued that multiple factors are at work when learners create the form-meaning associations predicted by the aspect hypothesis.This article is based on research conducted as part of Sugaya's doctoral dissertation submitted to Ochanomizu University. We would like to thank Kevin Gregg, Yoshinori Sasaki, and the anonymous SSLA reviewers for their insightful comments on an earlier version of this article. We also thank Manabu Kurosawa for his invaluable advice on statistical analysis. We are grateful to Chie Morizuka, Hiromi Ozeki, Masuyo Sugiyama, Orie Takahashi, Yoko Mukoyama, Yukari Hashimoto, and the other participants of the seminar on SLA at Ochanomizu University for their helpful discussions of this study. We also thank the participants in the study for their cooperation and those who kindly helped us recruit them. This research is partially supported by a grant from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (Developmental Index for Japanese L1 and L2 Acquisition and Comparative Research on the Acquisition of English and Japanese, grant No. 13410034, PI-Kiyoshi Otomo, Tokyo Gakugei University). A preliminary analysis of the acceptability judgment test appeared in Nihongo Kyooiku (Journal of Japanese Language Teaching; Sugaya, 2004).

The present study utilizes traditional silent reading and a think-aloud procedure to investigate the role of lexical cues to meaning in the incidental acquisition of the Spanish future tense. A total of 161 beginning-level university students of Spanish participated in the study. Two versions of a reading passage that contained 13 target items were created: One version contained a title and lexical temporal indicators (LTIs) in each sentence that contained a target verb, whereas the passage appeared with no title and no lexical cues in the second version. Both procedures employed the same tasks to measure the effects of LTIs on learner comprehension and processing of the 13 novel forms. The tasks were scored and submitted to statistical analysis. Results indicate that for both the silent reading and the think-aloud conditions, LTIs augment learner comprehension and do not detract from learners' noticing of forms. Furthermore, the text interaction format of the think-aloud protocol was found to significantly enhance recognition and production of the previously unfamiliar forms in the input.I wish to thank James F. Lee, who guided me through the realization of this project and continues to provide intellectual support. Additionally, I appreciate the feedback and encouragement provided by Kimberly Geeslin, who read many versions of this article. This investigation was supported by the University of Kansas New Faculty General Research Fund. Finally, I wish to acknowledge the anonymous SSLA reviewers for their insightful criticisms and comments. All errors are my own.

This study examines the effectiveness of written error corrections versus reformulations of second language learners' writing as two means of improving learners' grammatical accuracy on a three-stage composition-comparison-revision task. Concurrent verbal protocols were employed during the comparison stage in order to study the learners' reported awareness of the more targetlike reformulations. The reactivity of think-alouds as a research tool was also assessed. First, 15 adult learners of English participated in a repeated-measures study with three experimental conditions: error correction, reformulation, and reformulation + think-aloud. Participant reports of awareness in the reformulation + think-aloud condition suggested that noticing of feedback was related to the accuracy of subsequent revisions. A second nonrepeated-measures study was then carried out with 54 participants; a control group was added and the design was modified in an attempt to eliminate the reported tendency of learners to develop and use memorization strategies while processing the written feedback. In both experiments, participants performed significantly better in the error correction condition than in the reformulation condition. The think-alouds, used to examine learners' attentional processes, were found to be reactive in the first study; learners in the reformulation condition produced significantly more accurate revisions than those who were asked to think aloud while processing the reformulations they received. The results suggest that whereas verbal protocols might be able to shed some light on learner-internal processes in relation to written feedback, they should be employed and interpreted with care.We would like to thank Alison Mackey and the anonymous SSLA reviewers for their helpful suggestions on this article.

This article comprises two parts. The first part is a critique of R. Ellis's (2005) psychometric study, which attempted to use an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to establish operationalizations of the constructs of explicit and implicit knowledge. I argue that the choice of an EFA in this endeavor is misguided and that a confirmatory factor analysis should have been employed. Additionally, the specific execution of the EFA is criticized on a number of fronts. The major claim of the critique is that R. Ellis's study does not successfully demonstrate that his operationalizations are reducible to the two factors of implicit and explicit knowledge. The second part of this article goes on to make some methodological recommendations for future research in this area. Finally, the potential of structural equation modeling is pointed out as a response to Hulstijn's (2005) warning concerning the pitfalls of extreme rationalism and extreme empiricism within the future research trajectory of explicit and implicit knowledge.

Ellis (2005) and his coresearchers developed a number of tests with a view to providing relatively separate measures of explicit and implicit knowledge. The aim in the development of these tests was to resolve a continuing problem in SLA studies—namely the construct validity of tests used to measure acquisition—and, more specifically, to provide a basis for investigating the relationship between implicit and explicit knowledge (i.e., the strong interface, the weak interface, and the noninterface positions).

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE OUT OF PRE-LANGUAGE. Talmy Givón and Bertram F. Malle (Eds.). Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2002. Pp. 394. $57.95 paper.

The notion that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny has a long tradition, with the collection here being a recent and cogent revisit of the idea. Among the possibly relevant data are, as the back cover states, “aspects of language learning that may serve as models of evolutionary change.”

TEACHING AND LEARNING VOCABULARY: BRINGING RESEARCH INTO PRACTICE. Elfrieda H. Hiebert and Michael L. Kamil (Eds.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2005. Pp. x + 273. $89.95 cloth, $39.95 paper.

This volume is an anthology of papers originally presented at a conference convened in response to the influential report by the National Reading Panel in the United States in 2000, which highlighted the need for renewed research into vocabulary teaching and learning in American schools as one key component of a national strategy to boost literacy levels. The authors of the 12 chapters are some of the relatively small group of researchers who continued to undertake research on vocabulary during the past 20 years, when it has been strictly a minority activity within the first language (L1) reading research community in North America.

CONTEXTUALIZING COLLEGE ESL CLASSROOM PRAXIS: A PARTICIPATORY APPROACH TO EFFECTIVE INSTRUCTION. Lawrence N. Berlin. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2005. Pp. xxiii + 113. $24.50 paper.

This brief volume (119 pages of text) was written to provide “a model for engaging effective instruction with the variety of students that you [the reader] will encounter” (p. xv) in college English as a second language (ESL) or foreign language classrooms. The intended audience includes both graduate and undergraduate students as well as preservice and in-service teachers. The author espouses a problem-posing approach to teaching and to writing this volume, in that the reader is involved in a process of “naming issues, reflecting on them and possible solutions and acting upon your [the reader's] ideas” (p. xv).

PRAGMATICS AT WORK: THE TRANSLATION OF TOURIST LITERATURE. Maria Pilar Navarro Errasti, Rosa Lores Sanz, and Silvia Murillo Ornat (Eds.). Bern: Peter Lang, 2004. Pp. 245. $49.95 paper.

This volume is a collection of chapters on research in translation studies and pragmatics that focuses on the translation of tourist literature. It contains chapters by well-established figures in translation studies as well as contributions by scholars at the University of Zaragoza (Spain), including three by the editors themselves.

ANGLES ON THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING WORLD: WRITING AND VOCABULARY IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE ACQUISITION (Vol. 4). Dorte Albrechtsen, Kirsten Haastrup, and Birgit Henriksen (Eds.). Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2004. Pp. 151. $23.00 paper.

Comprised of eight research-based chapters and one book review, this volume brings together a compelling and unique array of research studies on two topics of ongoing interest to second language (L2) professionals. The volume opens with three L2 writing studies, the first two of which draw from the same investigation of university and preuniversity English as a second language (ESL) writers. The first chapter, “Activity Systems for ESL Writing Improvement: Case Studies of Three Chinese and Three Japanese Adult Learners Of English,” is co-authored by Yang, Baba, and Cumming. Using an activity theory framework, the researchers explore writers' perceptions of their learning intentions, crosslinguistic relationships, vocabulary, grammar, and the role of instruction in promoting their L2 composing skills. As the participants progressed in their ESL writing development, their activity systems evolved as a function of the interaction between external factors and internal predispositions. In the second chapter, “Scaling Changes in Learners' Goals for Writing Improvement over an ESL Course,” Cumming, Eouanzoui, Gentil, and Yang report on an analysis of interviews conducted with 45 preuniversity ESL writers. Their method featured dual scaling, which showed that participants' short- and long-term goals as students and writers remained stable over time, although the actions taken by students to improve their writing reflected individual learning styles.

THE ‘LANGUAGE INSTINCT’ DEBATE: REVISED EDITION. Geoffrey Sampson. New York: Continuum, 2005. Pp. xiii + 224. $130 cloth, $39.95 paper.

This volume, a revised version of Sampson's (1997) Educating Eve, is an empiricist response to linguistic nativism. Accordingly, the volumes's primary objective is to challenge the view that there is an innate component specifically responsible for the human linguistic capacity. This new edition presents insights from corpus linguistics, which are used to refute the original poverty-of-the-stimulus arguments. The introductory chapter gives a historical overview of the nativist doctrine by distinguishing between the original writings of Chomsky and present-day nativists such as Bickerton and Pinker. In this chapter, Sampson also introduces his view of language acquisition as a hypothesis-testing interplay between the learner and the environment, ideas that he attributes to Popper.

COLLOCATIONS IN A LEARNER CORPUS. Nadia Nesselhauf. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2004. Pp. xii + 331. $126.00 cloth.

Based on the author's dissertation, this volume provides a close look at the verb-noun collocations used by native German speakers writing argumentative or descriptive essays in English. A subset of 318 essays from the international corpus of learner English (ICLE) provides the 154,191-word corpus used in this study.

AUCHANDNOCH IN CHILD AND ADULT GERMAN. Ulrike Nederstigt. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2003. Pp. xiii + 406. $106.00 cloth.

Nederstigt's volume offers a detailed and comprehensive treatment of the usage and acquisition of two German focus particles, auch (roughly “also”) and noch (roughly “still”). In view of the ubiquity of auch and noch in adult language and their early emergence in first language (L1) development, Nederstigt's work is a substantial addition to the as-yet small body of existing research. This study is an impressively thorough and rigorous analysis of auch and noch in both adult and child speech that emphasizes the importance of investigating natural spoken discourse to gain maximally informative insights into patterns of usage and sequences of acquisition.

DECOLONISATION, GLOBALISATION: LANGUAGE-IN-EDUCATION POLICY AND PRACTICE. Angel M. Y. Lin and Peter W. Martin (Eds.). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters, 2005. Pp. xix + 204. $89.95 cloth, $39.95 paper.

This collection of 10 studies from Asian and African contexts begins with a general introduction by Luke that links many strands and challenges to current radical educational thinking as well as an introduction by the two editors; it terminates with a conclusion with reflections by Canagarajah. The editors present an intellectually challenging framework for reading the country studies and draw on themes to articulate a case for rethinking much language-in-education policy. Their hope is that the volume goes beyond state-of-the art description and theorization and can lead from coherent deconstruction to proactive reconstruction. This is needed because many of our analytical categories remain simplistic, and inadequate educational policy leads to the perpetuation of social inequalities. A key paradox is the widespread demand for more English, although English does not serve all equally well. Many do not develop high-level competence, whereas dominant groups or classes are groomed for the economy of globalization that has dashed most decolonization hopes. Across differing country reports, the pattern is of an “emptying out of the ‘linguistic local’ and the one-sided pursuit of the ‘linguistic global’” (p. 9).

FOCUS ON FRENCH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE: MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES. Jean-Marc Dewaele (Ed.). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters, 2005. Pp. x + 242. $79.96 cloth, $39.96 paper.

This volume is a collection of 10 chapters that report on various research projects in SLA, all relating to the learning of French or the nature of French second language (L2) interlanguage (IL). Although the use of the descriptor “multidisciplinary” seems a bit of a stretch, a range of specific research questions is addressed, in varying contexts, including the acquisition of French as a L2 or foreign language, in naturalistic or instructional contexts, by speakers of various first languages (L1s) and at beginning or, often, advanced stages of acquisition. Whereas the volume naturally takes its place in what the editor refers to as “the Anglo-Saxon SLA world” (p. viii) with strong representation of the Universal Grammar perspective, there are also contributors working in variationist sociolinguistics and a traditional psycholinguistic framework.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE LANGUAGE LEARNER: INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION. Zoltán Dörnyei. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2005. Pp. 270. $69.95 cloth, $29.95 paper.

This concise book on individual differences (IDs) in SLA presents research on topics such as language aptitude, motivation, cognitive styles, student self-regulation, and personality traits. Its in-depth treatment of the field will make it valuable to researchers in applied linguistics and second language (L2) studies. At the same time, its straightforward presentation and conversational tone should make it accessible to language teachers and students of L2 pedagogy interested in understanding more about what individual learners bring to the classroom.

HANDBOOK OF BILINGUALISM: PSYCHOLINGUISTIC APPROACHES. Judith F. Kroll and Annette M. B. de Groot (Eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. xiv + 588. $147.00 cloth.

The study of bilingualism has become an important field within applied linguistics, as indicated by the fact that in the past 3 years, several comprehensive volumes that relate to bilingualism have been published with the word “handbook” in their titles. Nevertheless, this volume offers new perspectives even to those who have read The Handbook of Second Language Acquisition (Doughty & Long, 2003) and The Handbook of Bilingualism (Bhatia & Ritchie, 2004). Whereas the previous handbooks summarize the state-of-the-art research findings and theories in the field of SLA, this new book, edited by Kroll and de Groot, familiarizes readers with the cognitive approach to the study of bilingualism. The majority of the chapters in this volume do more than just summarize psycholinguistic issues in SLA research; many of them present research findings not yet published (e.g., Christoffels & de Groot, Pienemann et al., Sanchez-Casas & Garcia-Albea, Tamar & Galan) and extend previous models of language acquisition and production to account for more phenomena of bilingualism (e.g., La Heij, MacWhinney, Myers-Scotton).

DISTANCE EDUCATION AND LANGUAGES: EVOLUTION AND CHANGE. Börje Holmberg, Monica Shelley, and Cynthia White (Eds.). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters, 2005. Pp. 360. $134.95 cloth, $54.95 paper.

Distance learning is the new reality for many subject matters, and language is no exception. This new approach to teaching invites educators to reconsider how to offer instruction that maintains the quality of face-to-face instruction and to explore the possibilities of taking advantage of technology to effect learning in new ways. This edited volume explores distance learning from six different vantage points: learner autonomy, learner perspectives and support, development of intercultural competence, methodology and course design, learning environments, and language teacher development.

Publications received.