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.