In discussions about relationships between research and pedagogy, teachers and researchers are often characterized as facing each other across a "gap" that separates them. Teachers are described as having practical concerns about their own classrooms and little patience for "theoretical" issues. Researchers are described as…

One of the challenges facing second and foreign language (L2) teachers and learners in primary and secondary school settings is the limited amount of time available. There is disagreement about how to meet this challenge. In this paper we argue against two 'common sense' recommendations for increasing instructional time -- start as early as…

This study is an investigation of the extent to which francophone learners of English as a second language (ESL) are aware of the differences between French and English question formation and how such awareness relates to their L2 performance. Three tasks were administered to 58 grades 5 and 6 francophone ESL learners. In a grammaticality…

There is increasing consensus that form-focused instruction helps learners in communicative or content-based instruction to learn features of the target language that they may not acquire without guidance. The subject of this article is the role of instruction that is provided in separate (isolated) activities or within the context of…

We report the results of a 2-year longitudinal comparison of grade 3 and grade 4 English-as-a-second-language learners in an experimental, comprehension-based program and those in a regular (i.e., more typical) language learning program. The goal was to examine the extent to which sustained, long-term comprehension practice in both listening and…

Two English-speaking six-year-olds attending a French-speaking kindergarten in Montreal were tested for the content of their French L2 (second language) utterances. An adaptation of the mean length of utterance (MLU) index was used to judge the order of acquisition in the encoding of semantic-syntactic relations in the second language. The same…

Reviews research on the effectiveness of recasts in first and second language acquisition, paying particular attention to how recasts have been defined and how their impact has been assessed in observational and experimental studies. Concludes that recasts appear to be most effective in contexts where it is clear to the learner that the recast is…

Discusses issues related to psycholinguistics since second-language acquisition (SLA) research has emerged as a scientific discipline. These issues include the debate about the place of an innate universal grammar in language acquisition, basic cognitive mechanisms underlying SLA, and pedagogical implications of recent developments in the…

Responds to Sheen's (2002) critique of a review article on the relationship between second language acquisition research and classroom second and foreign language teaching. The focus of the response is to clarify points made in both a 1985 and the 2000 articles and challenging Sheen's interpretation of those points. (Author/VWL)

Examines the changes in how researchers perceive the relationship between theories of language and theories of language acquisition. It is determined that a theory of grammar is a necessary component in native language acquisition and may also be required for second-language acquisition. (Author/CB)

Describes a research project in which the acquisition of French by two six-year-old boys, native speakers of English, was observed longitudinally. (CFM)

Reports on a study that examined the extent to which learners can make explicit first language rules that appear to influence their second language performance. The learners were 11- and 12-year-old francophone students learning English in intensive communicative English-as-a-Second-Language classes in Quebec. (Author/VWL)

This paper is based on a longitudinal study of the development of questions in the spontaneous speech of two anglophone boys learning French by attending French language schools. The development of form-meaning relations in information questions in the children's French L2 speech was examined and comparisons were made with the same form-meaning…

Describes a study which examines "introducer forms" used by English as a second language learners to initiate picture descriptions. Results suggest that students receiving formal second language instruction process the input data in ways which are more "acquisition-like" and often not consistent with what the teacher intends…

Explores the vocabulary available in English-as-a-Second-Language classes in which teachers have made a strong commitment to a communicative approach to language teaching. Provides an account of problems that were encountered in an attempt to establish a rich lexical environment in one classroom. (Author/VWL)