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Integrates theory, research, and practice on the learning of second and foreign languages as informed by sociocultural and activity theory. It familiarizes students, teachers, and other researchers who do not work within the theory with its principal claims and constructs in particular as they relate to second language research. The book also describes and illustrates the use of activity theory to support practical and conceptual innovations in second language education.

Based on a set of four research parameters, this book discusses the development of research questions and hypotheses, naturalistic and experimental research, data collection, and validation of research instruments. Each chapter includes examples and activities.

This book presents SLA research as a source of specifications for teachers to explore in their own classrooms. The author sees the four main roles of SLA researchers as developing relevant theories, conducting their own classroom research, making research accessible to teachers, and facilitating action research. Each chapter addresses a major issue in the field of SLA and language teaching.

Samuel Carver makes bad accidents happen to worse people. He's very good at his job. But nobody's perfect. And one of Carver's targets has got away. Now the world faces a new age of conflict driven by religious fanaticism. In Russia, the government have admitted they no longer know the whereabouts of one hundred small-scale 'suitcase nukes'. In Afghanistan and Kosovo, ruthless terrorists plot the downfall of their hated enemies. In Texas, a dying billionaire plots his own personal Armageddon. And Carver can do nothing to stop them. He was beaten and tortured and left to die, but Samuel Carver is a hard man to kill.When he awakes in a Swiss sanatorium from weeks of torment, he discovers that the woman he loves has vanished. Somehow he must find the strength to track her down.

Rod Ellis provides readers with a comprehensive review of this important area of applied linguistics. He does not take up a particular stance, but examines different theories of second language acquisition and the critical reactions to them.

Winner BAAL Book Prize

Task-based Language Learning and Teaching explores the relationship between research, teaching and tasks and seeks to clarify the issues raised by recent work in this field. The book shows how research and task-based teaching can inform each other and illuminate the areas of task-based course design, methodology and testing.

Shortlisted for the Ben Warren Prize

Learners who cannot decode alphabetic script have been left out of the SLA research enterprise, at considerable cost to our understanding of the human capacity for language learning. This book offers research evidence documenting the significant impact of low literacy skill on adolescents' processing of oral L2 input and acquisition. Together with a large body of closely related research in cognitive psychology, the findings lead to a startling conclusion: language processing skills that have been assumed to be universal human traits appear instead to be a product of learners' experience with alphabetic print literacy.

This book provides a clear and accessible introduction to the main methods of analysing samples of learner language. It examines the theoretical and research bases for the different methods, and thereby serves as an introduction to the field of second language acquisition research.

One balmy Texas evening, widowed financier Ben Fosberg answers the door to two Homeland Security agents. From the minute he lets them in, his life spirals out of control. A businessman has been killed in a hit gone wrong and Ben's card is in the dead hitman's pocket. The agents have a thousand questions for which he has no answers, but the evidence is still piling up against him when a mysterious stranger, known as Pilgrim, snatches him away from the agents and sets them both on a dangerous journey. Pilgrim's boss has been abducted by a man to whom destroying Ben's life is merely a task for the day. Ben and Pilgrim flee across the US with a hoard of agents and killers on their trail. Ben is still mourning his wife, cruelly murdered two years ago on their honeymoon. He is about to get a

An overview of form-focused instruction as an option for second language grammar teaching. It combines theoretical concerns, classroom practices, and teacher education.

Key features
Addresses the role of form-focused instruction (FFI) in language acquisition theory, teaching, and learning.
Considers the influence of theory and research on FFI in teacher education.
Examines classroom applications of FFI.
Addresses questions asked by language teachers, and reports research from the vantage point of informing L2 pedagogy.
Contains contributions by leading practitioners and researchers in the field of SLA and teacher education.

This edited collection of empirical studies examines the link between interaction and second language learning. The studies provide readers with insights into a wide variety of issues at the centre of current research into the relationship between conversational interaction and second language learning outcomes.

Key features
Examines the benefits of interactional feedback, discusses the source of the positive outcomes of recasts and negotiations.
Explores the relationship between learners' perceptions and learning.
Investigates individual differences such as working memory and gender, and considers both social and cognitive factors in interaction-driven development.

Research into language learner strategies has the fundamental goal of improving the teaching and learning of second languages. This book explores the notion that the reason some learners of second languages excel and others struggle lies in what the learners themselves do-the strategies they bring to language learning and to language use.

Key features
Provides a unique and timely re-examination of key issues such as strategies in context, strategy instruction, and strategy research methods by numerous experts in the field.
Offers an invaluable overview of what is known from empirical research about listening, reading, speaking, writing, vocabulary, and grammar strategies.
Proposes a clear and focused research agenda for the next decades.