Discusses several objections to Krashen's Input Hypothesis which states that language acquisition is the learners' understanding of a language at a stage slightly higher than their current one because of their understanding of extralinguistic cues of the language. (Author/LMO)

One of the essential differences between teaching a first and a second language is that the former is merely learned whereas the latter must usually be taught. This difference, while not absolute, still has enormous consequences. Although the "natural method" of second-language teaching is often championed, there is no way whereby the…

Revised and abridged version of You Can't Learn without Goofing (An Analysis of Children's Second Language Errors')'' to appear in Jack Richards (ed.), Error Analysis -- Perspectives in Second Language Acquisition,'' (Longmans). A goof'' is a productive error made during the language learning process. (RS)

Although critical of some of the claims made for contrastive analysis in the past, this article treats contrastive analysis as a useful pursuit which can contribute to language learning. (FB)

Discusses problems and issues in naturalistic (non-school) acquisition of the phonology of a second language (L2). The data come from a longitudinal study of four German-speaking siblings learning English as a second language within an English-speaking community without classroom instruction. (KM)

An historical overview of research on second language acquisition considers research topics examined in observational/longitudinal studies and experimental studies. The questions that have reappeared across both observational and experimental studies concern: (1) whether second language learning is the same or different from first language…

This collection of 52 papers in the field of applied linguistics presents ideas of diversified topics. General and specific topics in sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, and language instruction are covered. Testing, teaching methods, speech problems, and the use of computers, language laboratories, radio, and television are…

The main concern of this report is the nature of the reliance by children on prior native language (L1) knowledge in naturalistic, untutored second language (L2) acquisition. It is suggested that L1 reliance is systematic, in that specific conditions have to be met within the child's L2 development before he or she will, or can, draw on previous…

Certain proposed theories on second language acquisition, their justifications, and their predictions about English are examined in this paper. The first section discusses the process of second language acquisition; the stages and strategies learners use and progress through on their way to mastery are described. The second section discusses the…