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Second Language Learning Theories (2nd ed.). Rosamond Mitchell and Florence Myles. London: Arnold, 2004. Pp. xiii + 303. $21.95 paper.According to one authority, there are over 20 theories of SLA. This book attempts to help students without a substantial background in linguistics make sense of this diverse field by explaining and relating the most important of these. The second edition updates the original by dropping or shortening the discussion of older theories (Schumann's, 1986, acculturation model is now discussed in the chapter on historical antecedents) and updating the discussion of others (the expanded chapter on Vygotsky is particularly good). Chapter 1 contains a discussion of what an adequate theory of SLA would look like, pointing out, for example, the distinction between a property theory like Universal Grammar (UG) and a transition theory like connectionism; this distinction is referred to throughout the book. Chapter 2 offers a valuable account of the historical development of the SLA field, which includes discussions of behaviorism and the monitor model. Again, this preliminary groundwork is referred to in subsequent chapters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AN INTEGRATED VIEW OF LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT: PAPERS IN HONOR OF HENNING WODE. Petra Burmeister, Thorsten Piske, and Andreas Rohde (Eds.). Trier, Germany: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2002. Pp. xxv + 552. 40.00 € paper.Wode's lifetime of scholarship can be divided loosely into three general research areas, each of which comprises one section of this edited volume: theory-building in first (L1) and second (L2) language acquisition, the development of speech production and perception skills in L1 and L2, and immersion education and foreign language teaching. This first area of work, dating from the 1970s and early 1980s, draws in part from Wode's detailed analysis of the language of his four young children. The second, initiated in 1989 with Pieper, stems from a large-scale study of early phonological development. Finally, the third, begun in the wake of European integration, came out of his work to support immersion programs and language learning in preschools and elementary and secondary institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

MULTILINGUAL COMMUNICATION. Julian House and Jochen Rehbein (Eds.). Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2004. Pp. vii + 358. $90.00 cloth.Studies on multilingualism embody a range of theoretical approaches, research paradigms, and methods. In this book, the third publication in the Hamburg studies on multilingualism series, the focus is on the form-function relationship between the languages involved in multilingual communication and on the mechanisms that relate multilingual communicative processes to social structures. The volume consists of 11 chapters divided into three sections, and two useful appendixes (author and subject indexes). The editing is highly competent and the selection of papers is excellent in quality and scope. Papers mostly emerge from colloquia on linguistic aspects of multilingualism organized by the Research Centre on Multilingualism at the University of Hamburg; many provide access to empirical studies that had previously existed only as unpublished manuscripts or research reports. Most of the contributions deal with the creation of differentiated, multilingual communication systems due to the mutual influence of languages in contact, whereas others deal with functional explanations of problems in second language (L2) use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

La Créolisation: Théorie, Applications, Implications [Creolization: Theory, Applications, Implications]. Robert Chaudenson. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2003. Pp. 479. 39.5 € paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

TEACHING AND LEARNING VOCABULARY: BRINGING RESEARCH INTO PRACTICE. Elfrieda H. Hiebert and Michael L. Kamil (Eds.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2005. Pp. x + 273. $89.95 cloth, $39.95 paper.This volume is an anthology of papers originally presented at a conference convened in response to the influential report by the National Reading Panel in the United States in 2000, which highlighted the need for renewed research into vocabulary teaching and learning in American schools as one key component of a national strategy to boost literacy levels. The authors of the 12 chapters are some of the relatively small group of researchers who continued to undertake research on vocabulary during the past 20 years, when it has been strictly a minority activity within the first language (L1) reading research community in North America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

VOCABULARY IN A SECOND LANGUAGE: SELECTION, ACQUISITION, AND TESTING. Paul Bogaards and Batia Laufer (Eds.). Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2004. Pp. xiv + 233. $126.00 cloth, $42.95 paper.This volume consists primarily of papers that were presented at the second language vocabulary acquisition colloquium at Leiden University in March 2002 and represents a broad scope of quantitative studies by leading scholars in the field. It is organized under three different themes: “Selection,” “Acquisition,” and “Testing.” In the introduction, the editors briefly describe the contributions and follow with several pages that illustrate how the papers diverge on the conceptualization of central issues (e.g., the basic unit under investigation; aspects of the learning process, learning conditions, and time course of measurement; definitions of the construct of word knowledge). Finally, they add their own insightful perspectives on such issues, as well as helpful suggestions for further exploration, as a stimulus for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

DISCOURSE AND TECHNOLOGY: MULTIMODAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS. Philip Levine and Ron Scollon (Eds.). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2004. Pp. vii + 229. $49.95 paper.This volume is a collection of selected papers from the 2002 Georgetown University Round Table on Languages on Linguistics (GURT). It contains 16 papers that are either loosely related to multimodal discourse analysis or address the relationship between discourse and technology, but not necessarily from the viewpoint of multimodal discourse analysis. The main strength of the volume is that it provides a rich variety of perspectives on discourse; the main weakness is that the perspectives do not seem to shed light on one single phenomenon or even a set of related phenomena, but, rather, the papers discuss various aspects of the multifaceted field of discourse studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

THE HANDBOOK OF SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION. Catherine J. Doughty and Michael H. Long (Eds.). Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. Pp. 888. $157.95 cloth, $44.95 paper.This volume is one of the most recent and comprehensive collections of papers on the current state-of-the-art in SLA research. Arguing that “[a]s a widespread, highly complex, uniquely human, cognitive process, language learning of all kinds merits careful study for what it can reveal about the nature of human mind and intelligence” (p. 5), editors Doughty and Long have collected papers from 27 researchers—many of whom are the leading experts in their subfields—and organized them into seven sections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

THE NEUROBIOLOGY OF LEARNING: PERSPECTIVES FROM SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION. John H. Schumann, Sheila E. Crowell, Nancy E. Jones, Namhee Lee, Sara Ann Schuchert, and Lee Alexandra Wood. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2004. Pp. xiii + 212. $59.95 cloth, $34.50 paper.This volume is an attempt to relate neuroscience research to cognitive metaphors (e.g., auditory loop, Universal Grammar [UG], fossilization) used by SLA researchers and psycholinguists to describe language acquisition. The volume consists of six chapters, originally master's theses and PhD qualifying papers, and an introduction and conclusion by Schumann. The chapters review literature that pertains to the neurobiology of six subtopics: aptitude, motivation, procedural memory, declarative memory, memory consolidation, and attention. In the preface, Schumann suggests that the purpose of the volume is “to promote a neurobiology of language that starts with the brain and moves to behavior” (p. xi), although he acknowledges one page later that “empirical research on the hypothesized mechanisms may be some time off” (p. xii). The volume aims to convince the intended readership, SLA researchers who might know little or no neurobiology, that investing time in the study of the neuroscience of learning is critical to the field's progression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

HOW TO USE CORPORA IN LANGUAGE TEACHING. John McH. Sinclair (Ed.). Amsterdam. Benjamins, 2004. Pp. vi + 306. $114.00 cloth, $42.95 paper.This is the 12th volume in Benjamins' estimable Studies in corpus linguistics series and has been edited by Sinclair, in many ways the doyen of the field. After an introduction by the editor, the collection is divided into five sections. The first four cover “The Corpus and the Teacher,” “Resources—Corpora,” “Research,” and “Resources—Computing” and contain a total of eleven papers. The final section contains a single long essay by Sinclair, entitled “Prospects.” As these headings indicate, the range of this volume is somewhat broader than a perusal of its title alone might indicate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY IN LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION AND PRODUCTION: DIFFERENCES AND SIMILARITIES. Niels O. Schiller and Antje S. Meyer (Eds.). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2003. Pp. 355. $123.20 cloth.This collection offers various psycholinguistic perspectives on the link between the processes of speech comprehension and production. Some authors in this collection approach the topic by reviewing how well existing models deal with the comprehension-production relationship; others propose new approaches, including ones that show compatibility with evidence from neuroimaging studies. The final two of the nine papers address the topic from a SLA standpoint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CONTEXTUALIZING COLLEGE ESL CLASSROOM PRAXIS: A PARTICIPATORY APPROACH TO EFFECTIVE INSTRUCTION. Lawrence N. Berlin. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2005. Pp. xxiii + 113. $24.50 paper.This brief volume (119 pages of text) was written to provide “a model for engaging effective instruction with the variety of students that you [the reader] will encounter” (p. xv) in college English as a second language (ESL) or foreign language classrooms. The intended audience includes both graduate and undergraduate students as well as preservice and in-service teachers. The author espouses a problem-posing approach to teaching and to writing this volume, in that the reader is involved in a process of “naming issues, reflecting on them and possible solutions and acting upon your [the reader's] ideas” (p. xv). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CORPORA AND LANGAUGE LEARNERS. Guy Aston, Silvia Bernardini, and Dominic Stewart (Eds.). Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2004. Pp. 311. $119 cloth.The papers in this volume come from the fifth TaLC meeting in Bertinoro, Italy, in 2002 and address a range of issues related to using corpora for language learning and teaching. The introductory chapter by the three editors provides an overview of the book and also recaps the conference discussion between Sinclair and Widdowson regarding the nature of authentic language and its place in language instruction. The main portion of the book is divided into three sections: “Corpora by Learners,” “Corpora for Learners,” and “Corpora with Learners.” These three sections are framed by two chapters: one by Hoey on lexical priming and a final chapter by Fletcher on using the web as a resource for creating corpora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SECOND LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION: INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES. Diane J. Tedick (Ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2005. Pp. xxiv + 348. $79.95 cloth, $36.50 paper.One of the most difficult, complex, and seemingly intractable problems facing second language (L2) educators, especially in the United States, has been the tendency to restrict discussions and interactions to particular areas of specialization: foreign language education, teachers of English to speakers of other languages (TESOL), bilingual education, and so on. The causes of this professional Balkanization are myriad and are beyond our concern here. What is important, in my view, is that language educators learn to cross these artificial boundaries that divide us and recognize the common concerns, themes, and issues that unite us. Tedick's edited volume is an invaluable contribution to this effort. It brings together language educators from a variety of specializations to examine the preparation of both pre-service and in-service language educators. In fact, it does even more than this because the contributors to this volume also represent a widely divergent international group as well as an interesting and valuable mix of both researchers and practitioners at different levels. The book contains a total of 18 chapters, divided into four thematic sections that deal, respectively, with the knowledge base of L2 teacher education, the contexts of L2 teacher education, collaborations in L2 teacher education, and L2 teacher education in practice. Each thematic section of the book is introduced by a brief essay by the editor, which provides both an overview of the chapters included and a sense of how the papers relate to each other and to the remainder of the volume. Although each chapter is placed in a particular thematic section of the book, it should be noted that it is clear that most, in fact, address issues that cross several—and, in some cases, all—of the four organizational themes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ECOLOGY OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION. Jonathan Leather and Jet van Dam (Eds.). Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2003. Pp xiv + 225. $88.00 cloth.This volume contains 11 papers on various aspects of language acquisition both in first language (L1) and second language (L2) from an ecological perspective. This approach departs from generative grammar by rejecting both its theoretical and methodological axioms. It first questions the generative assumption that language is a mental state determined by human biology and experience. In its stead, proponents of the ecological view treat language as an entity inseparable from the speakers and their social network (Leather & van Dam, chapter 1). Methodologically, they dismiss generative grammar's essential tenet that competence should be investigated independently of performance; along with this, they also reject idealization in the study of language and language acquisition. Leather and van Dam also presume a priori the nonexistence of context-free meanings (cf. Higginbotham, 1988). As for language acquisition, they claim that the notion of primary linguistic data is too narrow; rather, data in other forms such as gestures and deictic motion are equally relevant in language acquisition. Although both the generative and ecological approaches emphasize individual language learners, for the former, language development constitutes the normal human biology, triggered by sensory input (Chomsky, 1995), whereas for the latter, it results from the interaction of the individuals and their cultural environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

TEACHING AND LEARNING BY DOING CORPUS ANALYSIS. Bernard Ketteman and Georg Marko (Eds.). Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002. Pp. vii + 390. $148.00 cloth.This substantial volume contains 23 papers selected from the Fourth International Conference on Teaching and Language Corpora (TALC) held in Graz, Austria in the summer of 2000. Like many edited conference proceedings, the chapters in this book vary quite widely in both the quality and quantity of the work presented. Further, the substance of some of the stronger contributions—such as Coxhead on academic vocabulary and Lee on a genre-specific index for the British National Corpus (BNC)—had already appeared in journals at the time of this volume's publication (Coxhead in TESOL Quarterly and Lee in Language Learning and Technology). In his opening remarks, McEnery salutes the widening range of topics in this volume, but I am less sanguine about the value of adding breadth. Certainly, the new emphasis on the role of corpora in translation studies and the teaching of translation in the final section is well motivated, but it is less clear whether Renouf's discussion of short-dimension diachronic change or Flowerdew's use of language learning diaries has much to do with the central issues in TALC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PRAGMATICS AT WORK: THE TRANSLATION OF TOURIST LITERATURE. Maria Pilar Navarro Errasti, Rosa Lores Sanz, and Silvia Murillo Ornat (Eds.). Bern: Peter Lang, 2004. Pp. 245. $49.95 paper.This volume is a collection of chapters on research in translation studies and pragmatics that focuses on the translation of tourist literature. It contains chapters by well-established figures in translation studies as well as contributions by scholars at the University of Zaragoza (Spain), including three by the editors themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE OUT OF PRE-LANGUAGE. Talmy Givón and Bertram F. Malle (Eds.). Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2002. Pp. 394. $57.95 paper.The notion that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny has a long tradition, with the collection here being a recent and cogent revisit of the idea. Among the possibly relevant data are, as the back cover states, “aspects of language learning that may serve as models of evolutionary change.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]