This article surveys the development of second language (L2) phonology over the last 40–50 years. Research in this area has grown from analyzing learners' errors in terms of Contrastive Analysis to proposals explaining L2 sound patterns in terms of constraints on interlanguage grammar. Although native language transfer has endured as one source of learner constraints, researchers have, over the years, shown the necessity of phonological universals in explaining L2 phonologies. More recently, L2 phonologists have provided insightful analyses through constraint-based grammars within the framework of Optimality Theory.I would like to thank two anonymous SSLA reviewers for their many helpful comments and suggestions on this manuscript. As always, neither of these people is responsible for any misstatements, misrepresentations, or other errors.

A series of experiments shows that Spanish learners of English acquire the ship-sheep contrast in a way specific to their target dialect (Scottish or Southern British English) and that many learners exhibit a perceptual strategy found in neither Spanish nor English. To account for these facts as well as for the findings of earlier research on second language (L2) speech perception, we provide an Optimality Theoretic model of phonological categorization that comes with a formal learning algorithm for its acquisition. Within this model, the dialect-dependent and L2-specific facts provide evidence for the hypotheses of Full Transfer and Full Access.We would like to thank the audiences of the 25th Penn Linguistics Colloquium (Philadelphia, 2001), Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition 2001 (Palmela), and EuroSLA 11 (Paderborn, 2001) and of talks in Lisbon, Amsterdam, Edinburgh, Utrecht, and Munich, all in 2001 as well, for their questions and remarks, and Rachel Hayes, Michael Sharwood Smith, and five anonymous SSLA reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. This research was partially sponsored by grant 355-75-003 to Boersma from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).

Research in first language and second language (L2) comprehension has demonstrated that both learner and input variables contribute to the ease with which a message is understood. Questions remain, however, as to how these variables affect the way L2 learners process linguistic form during comprehension. This study examines how one learner variable (topic familiarity) and two input variables (mode and pausing) affect learners' comprehension and their processing of a new morphological form (the Spanish future tense) in the input. Two hundred sixty-six participants in an accelerated beginning Spanish course either read or listened to a short narrative in Spanish on either a familiar topic or an unfamiliar one. Additionally, half of the listening groups encountered 3-second pauses between each sentence. After listening to or reading the passages, the participants performed two comprehension tasks (recall protocol and multiple-choice test) and two form-assessment tasks (form-recognition task and tense identification/translation). The results revealed that, although all three variables affected learners' comprehension, only mode affected learners' processing future tense morphology.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the conference Form-Meaning Connections in Second Language Acquisition held in Chicago in February, 2002. This paper is based on my doctoral dissertation completed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I am extremely grateful to Bill VanPatten for his guidance during the entire process of the research project as well as to James F. Lee, Diane Musumeci, Alice Omaggio Hadley, and Anna María Escobar for their feedback and encouragement. I also wish to thank the anonymous SSLA reviewers for their insightful and critical comments. All errors and omissions are, of course, my own.

ENRICHING ESOL PEDAGOGY: READINGS AND ACTIVITIES FOR ENGAGEMENT, REFLECTION, AND INQUIRY. Vivian Zamel and Ruth Spack (Eds.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2002. Pp. xxiv + 448. $37.50 paper.

With Enriching ESOL pedagogy, Zamel and Spack add to their impressive record of contributions to the field. This eclectic collection includes 22 readings organized in five coherent units: “Questioning the Nature of Methods,” “Seeing in the Classroom,” “Theories into Practice: Promoting Language Acquisition,” “Theories into Practice: Keeping Language Meaningful,” and “Questioning Assumptions about Language Identity.” Unlike many collections for teacher-scholars, this one offers readings in a wide range of genres—research reports, theoretical explorations, ethnographies, personal essays, and multigenre pieces. With original publication dates spanning 1982 to 1999, the readings were selected from top journals and collections. Without exception, the readings are thoughtful, interesting, and insightful—what one would expect from such notable authors as Rose, Hudelson, Krashen, Widdowson, Zamel, Wells Lindfors, Ortiz, and Tan.

FREQUENCY AND THE EMERGENCE OF LINGUISTIC STRUCTURE. Joan L. Bybee and Paul Hopper (Eds.). Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2001. Pp. vi + 492. $46.95 paper.

PROBABILISTIC LINGUISITICS. Rens Bod, Jennifer Hay, and Stefanie Jannedy (Eds.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. Pp. xii + 451. $35.00 paper.

MAKING COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING HAPPEN (2nd ed.). James F. Lee and Bill VanPatten. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2003. Pp. vi + 300. $75.65 cloth.

Teacher educators, students, and in-service teachers alike will find this to be a valuable resource. This text provides a clear and concise review of SLA research, effective approaches to language teaching, and numerous practical activities for the classroom. Although the book is written mainly from the foreign language classroom perspective, English as a second language specialists will also find it relevant.

THE L2 ACQUISITION OF TENSE-ASPECT MORPHOLOGY. Rafael Salaberry and Yasuhiro Shirai (Eds.). Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2002. Pp. x + 489. $110.00 cloth.

This volume originated from a colloquium on the second language (L2) acquisition of tense and aspect organized by Salaberry and Shirai at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Applied Linguistics in 1999. It contains revised versions of a selection of the colloquium papers and additional invited contributions for a total of 15 chapters authored by 16 contributors, many of whom have already made important contributions to our understanding of this area of SLA. Six L2s are investigated: English, Italian, French, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, and Japanese.

GENRE IN THE CLASSROOM: MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES. Ann M. Johns (Ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2002. Pp. ii + 350. $32.50 paper.

This book provides an excellent introduction to recent developments in genre analysis and related pedagogies. Although it assumes some background knowledge of applied linguistics and genre studies, the volume should be of interest to writing researchers as well as professors who teach the teaching of writing and other courses dealing with genre-related issues. The book is also suitable for any serious Master's or doctoral student with an interest in genre issues, whether for the purposes of scholarly investigation, teaching, or both.

DIALOGUE ON WRITING: RETHINKING ESL, BASIC WRITING, AND FIRST-YEAR COMPOSITION. Geraldine DeLuca, Len Fox, Mark-Ameen Johnson, and Myra Kogen (Eds.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2002. Pp. xvi + 488. $46.00 paper.

This collection is weighty, offering the reader 28 essays on first (L1) and second (L2) language writing theory and method in the college composition classroom, although the concepts of “theory” and “method” become problematic by the end of the collection. In their preface, the editors—who work with basic writers, English as a second language (ESL) writers, and first-year composition students—state that the book arose out of their conversations about the needs and strengths of these writers. The editors' backgrounds offered them an opportunity to look at the issue of college writing from a variety of perspectives as they began the task of selecting pieces for the collection. Three years and 300 articles later, they came down to 28 pieces, divided thematically into four parts—teaching writing, becoming a writer, responding to writing, and beyond the writing classroom. One of the editors wrote a separate introductory essay for each part, providing a comprehensive overview; indeed, one of the strengths of the anthology is the editorial voice that opens each section.

DEVELOPING PROFESSIONAL-LEVEL LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY. Betty Lou Leaver and Boris Shekhtman (Eds.). New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. xiv + 308. $65.00 cloth, $24.00 paper.

In the face of a vast array of non-English culture and language media, increases in diaspora populations in the United States and elsewhere, the importance of global circuits of capital (and hence global communicative practices), and the increasing penetration of world events into the lives of Americans (with its implications for national security), one would surmise that developing professional-level additional language expertise would not be the exception that it is in the United States. Lambert (2001) described the low percentage of American students who study a foreign language at the advanced level and estimated that only 3% of those studying commonly taught languages such as Spanish or French enroll in advanced-level courses. Although support for less commonly taught languages (LCTL) such as Arabic have recently increased, students enrolled in LCTL programs are presumably even fewer in number. It is also clear that advanced-level coursework occupies only a fraction of most language programs' overall investment of resources. In a fiscal climate that makes the academy increasingly accountable to private sector logic, few interested students make developing advanced language programs a nonutilitarian choice.

CULTURE AS THE CORE: PERSPECTIVES ON CULTURE IN SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING. Dale L. Lange and R. Michael Paige (Eds.). Greenwich, CT: Information Age, 2003. Pp. xvii + 362. $67.50 cloth, $34.95 paper.

It may be presumptuous to assume that all foreign or second language (L2) teachers agree that language instruction must involve some degree of learning about the culture of the native speakers of the language. However, it is next to impossible to deal with L2 education without taking culture into account. Because the goal of most L2 learning is communication, culture is inevitably involved in the curriculum. Yet, many language teachers are uncertain about what kinds of cultural aspects to include in the curriculum and instruction. In fact, we are sometimes puzzled about why L2 learners find it difficult to comprehend certain linguistic features that seem apparent to native speakers. If you are a language teacher and have ever had to deal with such questions, you will be attracted by the title of this volume. Lange, one of the editors, even asserts that “culture is the driving force in the process and the content of language learning” (p. 272).

CONTEXT AND CULTURE IN LANGUAGE TEACHING AND LEARNING. Michael Byram and Peter Grundy (Eds.). Clevedon, UK. Multilingual Matters, 2003. Pp. vi + 106. $39.95 cloth.

This small volume makes connections relating the theory and practice of language teaching to sociopolitical and geopolitical perspectives as well as to a differentiated view of learners and teachers as individuals. The efforts are for the most part very successful, and this volume will be of interest to anyone working in research, pedagogical applications, and theory-building context and culture in language teaching and learning. Eight of the nine articles in the volume had their origin as papers presented at a conference at the University of Durham in June, 2001. The articles address two categories of inquiry: reports of empirical studies of learners, and procedural or methodological contributions with a focus on teachers and teaching.

EXPANDING DEFINITIONS OF GIFTEDNESS: THE CASE OF YOUNG INTERPRETERS FROM IMMIGRANT COMMUNITIES. Guadalupe Valdés (with Heather Brookes, Christina Chávez, Claudia Angelelli, Kerry Enright, Dania García, and Marisela González). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2003. Pp. xxiv + 226. $65.00 cloth, $24.50 paper.

As Valdés explains in the introduction, this book is about

youngsters who carry out the very hard work of interpreting and translating when they are selected by their families to mediate communication between themselves and the outside world [and the] … skills that young interpreters develop in order to mediate and broker communication between members of majority and minority communities. (p. xvii)

ACQUISITION IN INTERLANGUAGE PRAGMATICS: LEARNING HOW TO DO THINGS WITH WORDS IN A STUDY ABROAD CONTEXT. Anne Barron. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2003. Pp. xviii + 403. $115.00 cloth.

As its title indicates, this book should be of interest to researchers in interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) or in the effect of study abroad on SLA. With respect to ILP, Barron investigates which aspects of discourse structure, pragmatic routines, and internal modification are easily and not so easily acquired by Irish English learners of German in three speech acts—requests, offers, and refusals of offers—as well as the role of transfer and the stages of acquisition in each case. More generally, her data advance our theoretical knowledge with respect to cognitive theories of SLA (Bialystok, 1993; Schmidt, 1993). With respect to study abroad, this book is one of the first published studies (and to my knowledge the first book) that deals specifically with the effects of a study abroad experience on the acquisition and development of pragmatic competence.

BILINGUAL SENTENCE PROCESSING: RELATIVE CLAUSE ATTACHMENT IN ENGLISH AND SPANISH. Eva M. Fernández. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2003. Pp. xx + 292. $118.00 cloth.

The purpose of this dissertation monograph is “to determine whether bilinguals, with proficiencies in each of their languages sufficient to support responsible fluency, process linguistic input by employing the routines that are followed by monolinguals of each of their languages” (p. 211). In other words, the question is whether the sentence processing of bilinguals is dependent on the language of the sentence (language dependence) or on the dominant language of the bilingual (called language independence). The study first identifies a sentence type with crosslinguistic processing differences and then seeks to determine whether monolinguals and bilinguals process those sentences differently in online (early phase) and offline (postsyntactic) tests.

DISCOURS, ACTION ET APPROPRIATION DES LANGUES [Discourse, action, and appropriation of languages]. Francine Cicurel and Daniel Véronique (Eds.). Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2002. Pp. 286. €19.00 paper.

As the words “discourse” and “action” in the title suggest, this volume focuses on the pragmatic aspects of SLA with a selection of refereed articles from the 1999 conference Acquisition d'une langue étrangère: perspectives et recherches “Acquisition of a foreign language: Perspectives and research” with the theme Usages pragmatiques et acquisition d'une langue étrangère “Pragmatic uses and acquisition of a foreign language.” In the introduction, the editors provide a brief overview of SLA research with a clear emphasis on pragmatic issues—for example, differences between naturalistic and classroom acquisition in terms of social contexts and interactional patterns. The volume contains three thematic sections followed by an epilogue featuring the written version of three contributions that served as a synthesis at the end of the conference. Each section is followed by grouped bibliographic references. This particular organization is a little off-putting, especially because this editorial choice is never clearly mentioned in the text. Further, the reference sections are somewhat sloppy with spelling inconsistencies for author names (Vygotski and Vygotsky), publication dates in the bibliography that do not always correspond to the article citations, and several in-text references omitted from the bibliography.

AUDIBLE DIFFERENCES: ESL AND SOCIAL IDENTITY IN SCHOOLS. Jennifer Miller. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters, 2003. Pp. xv + 200. $89.95 cloth, $29.95 paper.

Jennifer Miller's book is a case study that focuses on students' spoken English, how students are “heard” or become “audible” in the mainstream context, and the relationship between this audibility and identity formation. The twist, and one of the major contributions of this work, is Miller's careful theoretical positioning. She is working in the space where theories of identity formation and SLA overlap to paint a more complex and interesting picture of language acquisition than any of the theoretical frameworks could accomplish alone.

THE SOCIAL TURN IN SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION. David Block. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2003. Pp. viii + 162. $26.95 paper.

This book is devoted to what Block calls the Input-Interaction-Output (IIO) model of SLA. By this model, he means SLA research conducted over the last few decades by Gass, Long, Pica, Swain, and others, generally known as the “interaction hypothesis” and the “output hypothesis.” Block's chief aim is “to critically examine some of the basic notions and assumptions that underpin this model and to suggest a more interdisciplinary and socially informed approach to SLA research” (p. vii). He takes pains to point out that his criticisms are intended to be constructive, noting that his intent is to encourage IIO researchers to look beyond what he views as a psycholinguistic bias in mainstream SLA.

Publications received.