INVESTIGATIONS IN INSTRUCTED SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Extract

INVESTIGATIONS IN INSTRUCTED SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION. Alex Housen and Michel Pierrard (Eds.). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2005. Pp. ix + 568. $165.20 cloth.

This volume is a compilation of revised and expanded papers from the 2004 Colloquium on “Instructed Second Language Learning/L'appropriation d'une langue second en milieu guidé.” Nearly all of the assembled papers report on empirical studies that investigate second language (L2) production or acquisition by language learners in a range of formal instructional contexts, from elementary school immersion classes to adult and university foreign language courses. Following the editors' introduction, the 17 subsequent chapters are organized into four sections: (a) investigating cognitive and processing mechanisms in instructed SLA, (b) investigating the role and effects of form-focused instruction, (c) investigating the role and effects of interaction and communication-focused instruction, and (d) comparing the effects of instructed and naturalistic SLA contexts. Space constraints limit a thorough discussion of each of the papers, but a few noteworthy examples from each section will be discussed here.