Books in the Second Language Acquisition series

This book explores how lexical competence develops in a foreign language, and also argues for the importance of lexical accuracy as a measure of the quality of foreign language writing and as an indicator of receptive vocabulary knowledge.

This book investigates various aspects of speaking in a foreign language. It is unique in considering this key skill from both psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic perspectives, and in focusing entirely on instructed foreign language contexts. The book demonstrates how theory and research can be translated into classroom practice.

Individual Learner Differences in SLA addresses the apparently insoluble conflict between the unquestionably individual character of the process of second language acquisition / foreign language learning and the institutionalised, often inflexible character of formal instruction in which it takes place. How, then, is success in SLA so prevalent?

This book explains the detection-based approach to investigating crosslinguistic influence and illustrates the value of the approach through a collection of five empirical studies that use the approach to quantify, evaluate, and isolate the subtle and complex influences of learners' native-language backgrounds on their English writing.

This book explains the detection-based approach to investigating crosslinguistic influence and illustrates the value of the approach through a collection of five empirical studies that use the approach to quantify, evaluate, and isolate the subtle and complex influences of learners' native-language backgrounds on their English writing.

This book explores the role of identity in adolescent foreign language learning. It presents both qualitative and quantitative research, as well as a new model of identity, to support the claim that discrepancy in the display of the self can affect achievement in education.

This book provides a broad view of second language acquisition, from initial to final stages. It does so within a comparative perspective that addresses results concerning adult and child learners across a variety of languages, in order to assess the relative weight of cognitive and typological determinants during language learning.

This book examines L2 learners' development of pragmatic competence - the appropriate language use in a social context. It reveals patterns of development across different aspects of pragmatic abilities measured over one year and presents the participants' experiences and the individual characteristics that shaped their developmental trajectories.

This book broaches the question of the social impact of age on language learners from a social constructionist perspective, thus filling a gap currently existing in the literature on age and second language acquisition.

This book elicits L2 creative writers' own perspectives of their life histories through the form of interviews and think-aloud story writing sessions, and investigates the writers' emerging writing processes. It integrates socioculturalist L2 identity studies with the typically cognitivist process-oriented L2 writing research.

This book provides a linguistic and cultural profile of the Polish diasporic communities in 3 different European countries: Ireland, France and Austria. The 8 contributing chapters present original research on the acquisition and use of the languages of the respective host communities and also explore related elements of cultural acquisition.

With a focus on the morphosyntactic features of second language, this book discusses the idea that language acquisition is a discontinuous and 'quantized' process due to the existence of two different - albeit interconnected - ways of learning: Statistical Learning and Grammatical Learning.

The book offers a novel view of consciousness and its place in second language learning, using the established cognitive framework, MOGUL. It also provides an extensive review of theories of consciousness and related cognitive theory and research, placing that work in the context of second language learning.

This book evaluates a project where formal classroom learning of a second language was supplemented with informal, natural interactions with older native speakers of the target language, delivering a number of pedagogical and societal benefits. It introduces a model of language learning for students that can be used for any language or locality.

This book evaluates a project where formal classroom learning of a second language was supplemented with informal, natural interactions with older native speakers of the target language, delivering a number of pedagogical and societal benefits. It introduces a model of language learning for students that can be used for any language or locality.

This book details patterns of language use found in the writing of adult learners of Norwegian as a second language (L2). Each study draws its data from the same corpus of L2 Norwegian texts and examines the learners' use of Norwegian in relation to the morphological, syntactic, lexical, semantic and pragmatic patterns they produce.

This book offers a discussion of theoretical and methodological issues concerning the pivotal role of working memory in second language learning and processing. It includes theoretical chapters, empirical studies providing original data and new insights into the topic, and commentary chapters which chart the course for future research.

This book offers a discussion of theoretical and methodological issues concerning the pivotal role of working memory in second language learning and processing. It includes theoretical chapters, empirical studies providing original data and new insights into the topic, and commentary chapters which chart the course for future research.

This book provides a comprehensive and multidimensional examination of transfer in second language acquisition. It brings theoretical analyses together with work based on empirical observation. Chapters consider lexical, syntactic, phonological and cognitive perspectives on language transfer.

This book brings together linguistic, psycholinguistic and educational perspectives on the phenomenon of cognate vocabulary across languages. It discusses extensive qualitative and quantitative data on Polish-English cognates and their use by learners/users of English to show the importance of cognates in language acquisition and learning.

This collection provides an unprecedented insight into current approaches to the phenomenon of crosslinguistic influence (CLI) in SLA. Chapters investigate a variety of issues, structures and languages from different viewpoints to provide new perspectives on theoretical and empirical issues in CLI.

This volume brings together new research from different theoretical paradigms addressing the acquisition of French as a second language. It focuses on the acquisition of French in combination with different languages and enriches our understanding of the particularities of French and the role of language combinations in the acquisition process.

This book examines the applications of language learning motivation research theories and models from WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, developed) contexts to the EFL situation in Asian countries. Themes include the use of L2 selves as a theoretical model of motivation, teacher motivation and demotivation in Asian educational systems.

This book is open access under a CC BY licence. It spans the areas of assessment, SLA and pronunciation and examines topical issues and challenges that relate to formal and informal assessments of second language (L2) speech in classroom, research and real-world contexts. It will be of interest to anyone working on L2 pronunciation and assessment.