Efficiency in real-time language processing generally poses a greater challenge to adults learning a second language (L2) than to children learning a first language (L1). A notoriously difficult aspect of language for L2 learners to master is grammatical gender, and previous research has shown that L2 learners do not exploit cues to grammatical gender in ways that resemble L1 speakers. But it is not clear whether this problem is restricted to grammatical gender or whether it reflects a broader difficulty with processing local relations between words. Moreover, we do not know if immersive L2 environments, relative to typical L2 classrooms, confer advantages in learning regularities between words. In three eye-tracking experiments, 6- and 10-year-old children who were enrolled in Spanish immersion elementary schools listened to sentences with articles that conveyed information about the grammatical gender (Experiment 1), biological gender (Experiment 2), and number of referents in the visual field (Experiment 3). L1 children used articles to guide their attention to target referents in all three experiments. L2 children did not take advantage of articles as cues to grammatical gender, but succeeded in doing so for biological gender and number. Interpretations of these findings focus on how learning experiences interact with the nature of specific referential contexts to shape learners’ efficiency in language processing.

One of the stated objectives of this series, the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics (ARAL), from its earliest apperance, has been to strive toward a gradual approximation of a functional definition for applied linguistics. Despite the fact that applied linguistics has existed as a field for more than thirty years, despite the fact that there are a few publications available which attempt to define the field (Kaplan 1980, Grabe and Kaplana in press, Bright, et al. in press), and despite the fact that there are in the world a number of universities offering graduate study in applied linguistics and rewarding such study with credentials and degrees carrying the specific desgination applied linguistics, the field remains constrained by the absence of a clear definition of its parameters and by the absence of a clear theoretical framework.

Beginning with the framework established by Haugen (1983) as a basis for this review, corpus planning can be defined as those aspects of language planning which are primarily linguistic and hence internal to language. Some of these aspects related to language are: 1) orthographic innovation, including design, harmonization, change of script, and spelling reform; 2) pronunciation; 3) changes in language structure; 4) vocabulary expansion; 5) simplification of registers; 6) style, and 7) the preparation of language material (Bamgbose 1989). Jernudd (1988) provides a more detailed discussion of these linguistic aspects of language planning. Although the creation of these language related materials often requires intense linguistic activity, the focus of this review is not on linguistic description, but rather on historical and sociolinguistic studies which illuminate corpus planning processes. These processes can be divided into two categories: those related to the establishment of norms, and those related to the extension of the linguistic functions of language. In his revised model, Haugen labels the former category, Codification or standardization procedures, and the latter, Elaboration or the functional development of language. These categories form the two major sections for this review.

In this article, I review the use of the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technique to investigate the bilingual brain. Specifically, this review will discuss the types of research questions that can be (and have been) answered using this specific methodology, as well as questions this technique cannot answer. The review will then focus on providing a recent overview of fMRI studies of the bilingual mental lexicon, bilingual sentence processing, and the bilingual advantage in cognitive control. The pros and cons of this technique will be discussed in detail. This review will end with a discussion of the state of the art in the field of bilingual brain research and will provide avenues for future research directions to continue investigating the bilingual brain.

The publication of the ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) Guidelines (1986) and the creation and popularization of the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview (ACTFL-OPI) have had a profound effect on foreign and second language instruction and assessment, drawing attention to language students' abilities to use language in performing particular functions and tasks rather than to what they have learned about language. The growing interest in communicative language teaching, with its emphasis on meaningful interaction in the language as opposed to knowledge of linguistic rules, has complemented interest in the ACTFL Guidelines' descriptions of functional language ability and the interview-format oral proficiency interview.

This paper discusses the notion of language aptitude as a factor contributing to successful language acquisition achievements in polyglots. The difficulty in distinguishing between what is, indeed, language aptitude and what is language awareness is the main focus of the paper. A polyglot is operationalized here as a person who, after puberty, (a) acquired/learned at least six new languages (L2s), (b) commands at least six L2s at an intermediate or advanced proficiency level, and (c) presently uses these languages relatively unimpededly in oral interaction. The article draws specifically on a controlled investigation of ten polyglots who were extensively interviewed and tested for language aptitude, motivation, language awareness, and use of language learning strategies. Results show well above average, often outstanding, aptitude scores and an immediate preference for explicit learning. It appears that the combination of strong motivation and high levels of language aptitude and language awareness is what makes polyglots unusually successful second language learners. This paper suggests that language aptitude is both a prerequisite for developing high levels of language awareness and (since the two concepts are partially overlapping), much of the dynamism sometimes ascribed to aptitude is indeed awareness.

This issue was designed to include a wide range of research on children's second language learning. Here we provide a short overview of each of the articles contained in this issue, many of which bring up novel ideas and topics, as well as new takes on familiar themes that sometimes challenge prior conceptions and, ideally, inspire new understandings of child language acquisition, and policies, and practices in instructed settings. The 15 articles in this issue are based in instructed and naturalistic settings and include reviews and experimental work, and collectively represent learners between 5 to 18 years old. The language backgrounds include Mandarin (first language [L1]), Arabic (L1), Basque (L1), Cantonese (L1), English (second language [L2]), Hebrew (L1, L2), Spanish (L1, L2), and Thai (L1). Topics include the uniqueness of child second language acquisition (SLA); learning in majority language classrooms; best practices in bilingual schooling, cognition, and SLA in younger learners; testing and assessment relating to age and language choice; and methodological contributions that arise from the particular challenges of researching child second language development in instructed and naturalistic settings.

In a brief article published some years ago (Foster-Cohen 1993), I suggested that fruitful collaboration between the fields of first and second language acquisition was underexploited. I also suggested that second language researchers were, in general, better at keeping themselves informed of developments in first language studies than first language researchers were at paying attention to second language issues. I think it fair to say that there are some signs this is changing. One is the now established existence of the journal Language Acquisition (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates), started in 1990, which publishes work in both first and second language acquisition with a view to understanding the nature of language acquisition in general. Its preference for papers that address issues in formal linguistic theory complements well Applied Psycholinguistics (Cambridge University Press), which has always published material relevant to both fields, but which also goes well beyond acquisition issues in its brief. A second factor seems to be a gentle but insistent re-examination of issues in bilingualism and a growing awareness that bilingual studies, second language studies, and first language studies overlap in important ways in the study of the bilingual individual. One key indicator of this shift is the appearance of a new journal Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge University Press).

This paper summarizes current theoretical and practical issues of second language learning and teaching in the national curricula of three countries—Singapore, Malaysia, and Brunei Darussalam. One unifying feature of these three countries in ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) is the fact that they are multilingual communities with a vast range of complex linguistic and cultural traditions. A second is that they represent parallel cases of countries in which English has played an internal role historically. A third is that these countries all have Malay as the national language (albeit, in Singapore, with a large Chinese majority and with English as an important working language—Malay is not as widely used). A fourth is that bilingualism is a language policy, whether publicly advocated or implicitly sanctioned.

The teaching of the language of business, sometimes also called the “language of commerce” or “administration” (Yates 1977), has the longest history of any specific purpose teaching area; and, in ESP at least, the largest number of textbooks have been produced for business students (Robinson 1980). Yet most seminal research contributions to ESP have been in English for Science and Technology (EST). Due to this phenomenon, Swales (1985) subtitles his ESP retrospective “a source and reference book on the development of English for science and technology.” Earlier well-known collections–e.g., MacKay and Mountford (1978), Trimble, Trimble, and Drobnic (1978), and Selinker, Tarone, and Hanzeli (1981)–provide further evidence for the dominance of EST in teaching and research.

Although English fulfills many of the functions of an official language in Australia, the Australian Constitution does not declare it to be the official language. Instead, it serves as the lingua franca of a culturally and linguistic diverse population. It is the language of Parliament and Administration, and the language in which official records are kept. Only on one occasion was a federal government bill passed multilingually, the Report and Recommendations of the Review of Programs and Services for Migrants (in 1978), which was written in ten languages other than English.

The paywall blocks broad participation in scientific discourse, and it is both financial and psychological. The financial paywall makes access to peer-reviewed research prohibitively expensive for many researchers. The psychological paywall refers to the gatekeeping nature of academic language. Elites hoard the products of scientific research and gatekeep membership in the specialist communities via arcane vocabulary and discourse structures, together with imposition of a tone that demands dispassionate engagement with topics that are urgent and painful to the participants of their research. To exclude the perspectives of those outside the ivory tower is to dismiss unique experiences and epistemologies, essentially blocking diversity of thought in linguistic science. A range of tools is needed to undermine this power structure. Here I highlight one, which is diverse media, in general, and podcasting, specifically. Podcasting brings diverse views into the conversation and allows racially offensive ideas to be understood as such so they can then be challenged. I present the case study of the putative so-called “30-million-word gap”—the claim that, by the time they are four years old, historically marginalized children are exposed to thirty million fewer words than middle- and upper-class white children. I use this notion, which is preposterous on its face, to illustrate the emancipatory potential of the podcast medium.

The paper examines anxiety as an important emotion for language learning and communication, using the intraindividual, dynamic emotional experience as a grounding for understanding the antecedents and consequences of anxiety arousal. The bulk of the existing literature, as reflected in three recent meta-analyses, treats language anxiety as a stable individual difference (ID) factor, documenting its correlations with test performance, course grades, and other indices of language proficiency. This literature contributes to understanding the impact of language anxiety on various linguistic processes. However, the typical ID approach has difficulty documenting the inner workings of language anxiety, and especially its dynamic relationships with other emotions, language processing, and the ebb and flow of anxiety in social situations. To address the limitations of the typical ID approach, this paper will argue that starting from an intrapersonal and dynamic perspective allows more detailed consideration of the myriad ways anxiety interacts with language, situating it among other influential processes that unfold in real time, including the complex interactions among positive and negative emotions. The paper will draw on the work emerging from the perspective of complex dynamic systems, with a focus on the value of individual-level methods for generating new types of research questions. The idiodynamic approach to research will be used to document the complexity of language anxiety in practice. The paper concludes with a call for more individual-level, highly contextualized research to document the inner workings of anxiety within individuals.

For hundreds of years, language educators have alternated between favoring language teaching approaches which focus on language form and those which emphasize language use or which focus on the message (Celce-Murcia 1979). For the greater part of this past decade, it has been the latter which have been fashionable. As a consequence, language teachers have been discouraged from teaching grammar. In fact, during the 1980s explicit grammer instruction has even been proscribed by certain methodologists (Krashen 1982; 1985, Krashen and Terrell 1983, Prabhu 1987). Although this position has been repeatedly assailed (Higgs and Clifford 1982, Long 1983; 1988, Harley and Swain 1984, Pienemann 1984), the proscribers persist. Only as recently as June 1988, Van Patten concluded that “…research evidence to date does not suggest that a focus on form is either necessary or beneficial to early stage learners’ (1988:243). Undeniable is the fact that research has pointed to a difference in learner performance (e.g., type of errors made) depending on whether there is a focus on form or not (Pica 1983, Spada 1987); still to be resolved, and surely an issue which will motivate much research in the next decade, is the extent to which a focus on form versus on a focus on message affects the rate of target language attainment. Such research will hopefully be conducted in a way which disambiguates “focus on form” (Larsen-Freeman and Long 1988, Beretta 1989).

The interface between creole studies and language change has been a tumultuous area since the late 1990s. Evidence has been found confirming that children created Hawaiian Creole English; the “decreolization” approach to the creole continuum has become largely obsolete; work on creoles and grammaticalization has expanded beyond its former concentration on Tok Pisin; creolists working within the generative syntax tradition have questioned whether creolization is a distinct process at all; other work argues that creoles are synchronically as well as sociohistorically definable; and the very centrality of plantation contexts' sociology to creole genesis has been questioned. Concepts often taken as assumptions ten years ago are now widely questioned, even the very definition of creole itself.

The position of minority groups and the maintenance of their languages are very much in the news today. For (largely) indigenous minorities, consider the case of continental Europe: As it moves—sometimes erratically—towards federalism, its minorities and its “stateless” peoples are pressing for increased and improved recognition. In October 1981, the European Parliament adopted the Arfé resolution, providing such recognition. A number of further developments have occurred, important among which was the establishment in 1982 of the Dublin-based Bureau for Lesser Used Languages. Its Secretary-General recently observed that:

If our languages have been ignored in the past by European institutions this is no longer the case. The European Community is positive towards the cause of our languages and now includes in its budget a provision of 3.5 million ECU to promote regional and minority languages and cultures (Breathnach 1993:1). (See also Baetens Beardsmore 1993; 1994, Edwards 1994a, Sikma and Gorter 1991.)

For centuries linguists in theoretical linguistics and contrastive analysis have confined themselves to the sentence boundary. This selfimposed restriction is, no doubt, the result of the view, sustained since classical times, that language is a self-contained system, a mechanism for producing and comprehending sentences. The study of discourse was, untill recently, left to scholars from fields such as anthropology, sociology, psychology, and literary criticism who were interested in language.

In referring to evaluation, this chapter is not describing the testing that is done in language programs. As Alderson put it, “evaluation is the process of seeking to establish the value of something for some purpose, a test is an instrument for gauging learning outcomes” (1986:5, emphasis added). The use of the word testing will refer only to the instruments. The term evaluation will be used to include all of the instruments and processes involved in gathering information to make judgements about the value of an educational program. More precisely, language program evaluation will be understood as the systematic collection and analysis of information necessary to improve a curriculum, assess its effectiveness and efficiency, and determine participants' attitudes within the context of a particular institution (Brown 1989; 1995).

Although business settings have been a site of language contact for many years, the field of “language in business” has changed substantially during the past two decades. The proliferation of topics and approaches has contributed to shaping what is now an eclectic disciplinary field, methodologically diverse. Thus, this review of the field will necessarily move beyond sociolinguistic approaches and theories of variation and change. In particular, the globalization of the workforce and the growth of multinational and multilingual corporations have strengthened the perception of English as the “lingua franca” of international business, though some recent research challenges aspects of this perception in multicultural corporate settings. Intercultural communication, especially recent developments in that field, including its “discursive turn” and its current preference for qualitative studies, has made a significant contribution to the study of multicultural/multilingual business interaction. In the concluding section, we discuss three particular areas of development: (a) the growth in the use of new media and the analysis of that use and its impact on business discourse in context; (b) the shift from the analysis of written to spoken discourse and from simulated data to naturally-occurring corporate language; (c) and the increasing need to study the language of the multilingual workplace. We argue for redressing the balance of research into business as a site of language contact in favor of less well-represented languages and cultures through indigenous discourse studies, and we note in particular the increasing frequency and importance of work involving Asian languages.