In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Stephen Krashen developed Monitor Theory--a group of hypotheses explaining second language acquisition with implications for language teaching. As the L2 scholarly community began considering what requirements theories should meet, Monitor Theory was widely criticized and dismissed, along with its teaching…

In this essay, I review one of the conclusions in Lindseth (2016) published in "Foreign Language Annals." That conclusion suggests that explicit learning and practice (what she called form-focused instruction) somehow help the development of implicit knowledge (or might even become implicit knowledge). I argue for a different…

Reviews the nature of processing instruction (PI) and the research that has been conducted on it since 1993. Concludes that Batstone's (2002a) analysis and critique of PI is unfounded and that PI captures his given-to-new principle via the feedback learners get during instruction. (Author/VWL)

Research on second language acquisition (SLA) and research on foreign language learning (FLL), often regarded as different and separate fields of inquiry, are compared in a brief review of literature. Perceptions about the scopes and characteristics of the research are examined. Concerns about the relationship between SLA research and theory and…