This selective review of the second language acquisition and applied linguistics research literature on grammar learning and teaching falls into three categories: where research has had little impact (the non-interface position), modest impact (form-focused instruction), and where it potentially can have a large impact (reconceiving grammar).…

In this "First Person Singular" essay, the author describes her education, teaching experience, and interest in understanding the learning of language. Anyone reading this essay will not be surprised to learn that the author's questions about language learning and optimal teaching methods were only met with further questions, and no…

Learning inflectional morphology is a vexing problem for second language (L2) learners. Children acquiring their native language also experience some difficulty, which results in their committing overgeneralization errors. Long after individuals have achieved a high level of proficiency in the L2, they are still plagued by uncertainty when it…

It is a good practice to try to understand matters at hand by first stepping back and adopting an historical perspective, which I will begin this review by doing. Next, I will take up the challenges that each of the authors in the articles in this volume has presented for the study of complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) in second language…

Suggests that from a pedagogical perspective, there is a cost to associating grammar with rules. Discusses reasons for underlying rules and gives implications for a reason-based approach to teaching grammar. (Author/VWL)

Seeing language as a complex, dynamic system and language use/acquisition as dynamic adaptedness ("a make-do" solution) to a specific context proves a useful way of understanding change in progress, such as that which occurs with a developing L2 system. This emergentist shift of perspective provides another way of understanding previously observed…

This digest considers the misconception that grammar is a collection of arbitrary rules about static structures in a language by challenging 10 common myths about grammar and its teaching. The myths include the following: (1) grammar is acquired naturally; it need not be taught; (2) grammar is a collection of meaningless forms; (3) grammar…

The development of communicative skills in a second language, it is argued, should include grammatical competence as well as form and message. The importance of grammatical instruction and teaching trends and theories are discussed, ending with the conclusion that the climate exists for development of a fully articulated theory of pedagogical…

This study presents a formal device which can be used to display interlanguage variability while revealing its overall systematicity. Two types of variability are recognized: (1) production of a number of variant structures for a single target language structure at one point in time; and (2) variation over time that is attributable to the…

Discusses the similarities between the science of chaos/complexity and second language acquisition (SLA). Notes that chaos/complexity scientists focus on how disorder yields to order and on how complexity arises in nature. Points out that the study of dynamic, complex nonlinear systems is meaningful in SLA as well. (78 references) (Author/CK)

Compositions written by 48 university students of English as a Second Language (ESL) were examined as a step in the development of an index for proficiency in a second language. A feature analysis of the compositions revealed the following tendencies: (1) syntactic sophistication and tense usage improved as proficiency increased, (2) errors in…