Books in the Elements in Second Language Acquisition series

This Element investigates the human capacity to learn additional languages later in life, analysing diverse learner data to explore the connections between first and second language acquisition.

The acquisition of the aspect is a central area in Second Language Acquisition research. This Element shows how comparison of behavioral (production-comprehension), processing and statistical data is improving - and partially changing - our understanding of how learners acquire the aspectual distinctions of the target-language.

This Element defines implicit language aptitude, examines tasks that can be used to measure implicit language aptitude, and provides an overview of relevant research in this area.

This Cambridge Element examines the role and nature of focus on form in second language acquisition. An overall assessment of the role of instruction and the nature of language is provided.

This Element explores the roles of explicit and implicit learning in second language acquisition. The authors lay out some key issues that they take to underlie the debate on the extent to which second language acquisition involves explicit learning, implicit learning, or both. They also discuss what they take to be an oversight in the field: namely, the lack of clear definitions of key constructs. Taking a generative perspective on the nature of language, while addressing alternative approaches at key points, they refocus the discussion of explicit and implicit learning by first asking what must be learned (i.e., what is this mental representation we call "e;language"e; that all functioning humans possess?) The discussion and research reviewed leads to the conclusion that second language acquisition is largely if not exclusively implicit in nature and that explicit learning plays a secondary role in how learners grapple with meaning.