Rod Ellis - Understanding Second Language Acquisition: Second Edition (Oxford Applied Linguistics)

Understanding Second Language Acquisition

Published in this series

BACHMAN: Fundamental Considerations in Language Testing

BACHMAN and PALMER: Language Assessment in Practice

BACHMAN and PALMER: Language Testing in Practice

BATSTONE: Sociocognitive Perspectives on Language Use and Language Teaching

BRUMFIT: Individual Freedom and Language Teaching

BRUMFIT and CARTER (eds.): Literature and Language Teaching

CANAGARAJAH: Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in Language Teaching

COOK: Language Play, Language Learning

COOK: Translation in Language Teaching

COOK and SEIDLHOFER (eds.): Principle and Practice in Applied Linguistics

DRNYEI: Research Methods in Applied Linguistics

DRNYEI: The Psychology of Second Language Acquisition

ELLIS: Understanding Second Language Acquisition (second edition)

ELLIS: SLA Research and Language Teaching

ELLIS: Task-based Language Learning and Teaching

ELLIS: The Study of Second Language Acquisition (second edition)

ELLIS and BARKHUIZEN: Analysing Learner Language

FOTOS and NASSAJI (eds.): Form-focused Instruction and Teacher Education

HOLLIDAY: The Struggle to Teach English as an International Language

HOWATT WITH WIDDOWSON: A History of English Language Teaching (second edition)

HYLAND: Academic Publishing: Issues and Challenges in the Construction of Knowledge

JENKINS: The Phonology of English as an International Language

JENKINS: English as a Lingua Franca: Attitude and Identity

KERN: Literacy and Language Teaching

KRAMSCH: Context and Culture in Language Teaching

KRAMSCH: The Multilingual Subject

LANTOLF (ed.): Sociocultural Theory and Second Language Learning

LANTOLF and THORNE: Sociocultural Theory and the Genesis of Second Language Development

MACKEY: Input, Interaction, and Corrective Feedback

MACKEY (ed.): Conversational Interaction and Second Language Acquisition

MURPHY: Second Language Learning in the Early School Years: Trends and Contexts

NATTINGER and DECARRICO: Lexical Phrases and Language Teaching

PHILLIPSON: Linguistic Imperialism

SEIDLHOFER (ed.): Controversies in Applied Linguistics

SEIDLHOFER: Understanding English as a Lingua Franca

SELIGER and SHOHAMY: Second Language Research Methods

SKEHAN : A Cognitive Approach to Language Learning

STERN: Fundamental Concepts of Language Teaching

TARONE, BIGELOW and HANSEN: Literacy and Second Language Oracy

WIDDOWSON: Aspects of Language Teaching

WIDDOWSON: Defining Issues in English Language Teaching

WIDDOWSON: Practical Stylistics

WIDDOWSON: Teaching Language as Communication

WRAY: Formulaic Language

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP , United Kingdom

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the Universitys objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries

Oxford University Press 2015

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

eBook Edition

ISBN: 978 0 19 442201 7 eBook (epub)

ISBN: 978 0 19 442202 4 eBook (mobi)

First published in 2015

No copying or file sharing

This digital publication is protected by international copyright laws. No part of this digital publication may be reproduced, modified, adapted, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, to any other person or company without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the ELT Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above

You must not modify, adapt, copy, store, transfer or circulate the contents of this publication under any other branding or as part of any other product. You may not print out material for any commercial purpose or resale

Any websites referred to in this publication are in the public domain and their addresses are provided by Oxford University Press for information only. Oxford University Press disclaims all and any responsibility for the content of such websites

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors and publisher are grateful to those who have given permission to reproduce the following extracts and adaptations of copyright material: p.98 Figure from On the Variability of Interlanguage Systems by Elaine Tarone, Applied Linguistics, Vol. 4 (2), 1983. Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press. p.107 Figure adapted from A Dynamic Look at L2 Phonological Learning: Seeking Processing Explanations for Implicational Phenomena by Pavel Trofimovich, Elizabeth Gatbonton and Norman Segalowitz, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Indiana University Linguistics Club. Reproduced by permission of Cambridge University Press. p.122 Table from The Study of Second Language Acquisition by Rod Ellis (Oxford University Press, 2008), adapted from The Sounds of English and Spanish by Robert P Stockwell and J Donald Bowen (University of Chicago Press, 1965). Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press and University of Chicago Press. p.125 Extract from Markedness and the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis by Fred R. Eckman, Language Learning, Vol. 27 (2), 1977. 1977 Language Learning Research Club, University of Michigan. Reproduced by permission of John Wiley and Sons. p.187 Table from Input Processing and Grammar Instruction by Bill VanPatten (Ablex Publishing Company, 1996). Reproduced by permission. p.242 Table from Investigations in Instructed Second Language Acquisition by Alex Housen and Michel Pierrard, (De Gruyter, 2004). Reproduced by permission of De Gruyter.

Although every effort has been made to trace and contact copyright holders before publication, this has not been possible in some cases. We apologize for any apparent infringement of copyright and if notified, the publisher will be pleased to rectify any errors or omissions at the earliest opportunity.

Additional online resources are available at www.oup.com/elt/teacher/understandingsla

To my children Lwindi, Emma, Anne, and James for their forbearance

The first edition of this book was published in 1985thirty years agowhen second language acquisition as a disciplinary field (SLA) was still in its infancy. At that time, it was a relatively easy task to survey the quite limited research and provide an overview of the key areas of SLA. Since then research has proliferated, the boundaries of SLA have expanded, theories have been revised and new theories developed, old methodologies have been challenged and new ones proposed. This makes the task of providing a succinct but comprehensive account of the field much more challenging. I have approached it with trepidation.

This new edition has turned out, in fact, to be an entirely new book with an old title. Some of the areas that figured in the earlier edition are also addressed in this book reflecting their continuing importance: the significance of learners starting age (). But each of these areas has been the subject of intensive research in the last thirty years, leading to new theoretical insights. Some of the conclusions I reached in the first edition are now much less certain. For example, whether there are universal orders and sequences in the acquisition of grammatical features of a second languagefor a long time an accepted facthas become a matter of dispute. The chapters that deal with these issues have been almost completely rewritten to reflect the new perspectives and findings of research completed since 1985.