The present paper generally reviews the history of second language (L2) researchers' efforts in an attempt to find such an index and the possible reasons for the difficulties in establishing the developmental index from both the theoretical and the empirical viewpoints. Two contradictory views--interlanguage theory and emergentism--can finally be…

The thesaurus is divided into two parts. The first part lists descriptor terms under eight main areas of concern in foreign language instruction; the second lists terms alphabetically and includes "use" and "use for" notations. More that 500 descriptors are included. An introduction describes the work of the Information Center for Research in…