Second Language Acquisition

An Introductory Course

By Susan M. Gass, Larry Selinker

Price: $49.95

• ISBN: 978-0-8058-5498-5
• Binding: Paperback (also available in Hardback)
• Published by: Routledge
• Publication Date: 31st January 2008
• Pages: 616

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About the Book

The new and updated edition of this bestselling introductory textbook is a comprehensive overview of the field of second language acquisition. In an easy-to-read, accessible style, it provides students with information about the scope of the field, but also provides background information on related areas such as first language acquisition. The book introduces students to current issues of data collection and data analysis, as well as provides an historical overview of the field, thus giving students context and perspective about how today's issues arise from earlier approaches.

Each chapter offers discussion questions and/or problems so that students can put their knowledge to use in a way that is relevant to what they have learned, but that also challenges them to go beyond what is in the chapter and to relate information across chapters.

The book covers a range of areas of second language research including sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic, and linguistic perspectives. It also includes a chapter on the lexicon and on instructed second language learning. The concluding chapter pulls the information in the previous chapters together into a coherent framework that challenges students to think about the field of second language acquisition as a whole.

Reviews

"A tour de force. The authors have taken the best text available for an introductory course in second language acquisition (SLA) and made it even stronger…. The improvements in the third edition are palpable from the very beginning of the text ….The third edition of Second Language Acquisition: An Introductory Course should form the basis for any introduction to SLA, at either the graduate or undergraduate level. This text would also, in my view, be an ideal point of entry for any linguists or language specialists who would like to familiarize themselves with the field of SLA theory."

Fred Eckman, Center for the Advanced Study of Language, University of Maryland

"Second Language Acquisition: An Introductory Course presents the most balanced, grounded, and accessible introduction to a broad field. The field has grown rapidly since publication of the second edition in 2001, and a new, updated, and expanded edition is most welcome. In the third edition, Gass and Selinker’s overview of the field of SLA continues to be encyclopedic…. Gass and Selinker make this breadth of knowledge accessible to students with little background in the feeder disciplines. The authors have painted an accurate and detailed picture of a vibrant field…. Second Language Acquisition has now become a living standard in our field."

Richard Young, Professor of English Linguistics, University of Wisconsin-Madison

"This text presents a comprehensive overview of SLA in an accessible, highly readable manner appropriate for readers new to this discipline…. The new edition includes even more data samples than the previous edition, both integrated into the main text and in the discussion questions at the end of each chapter."

Deborah Pilcher, Gallaudet University

"Gass & Selinker have assembled a reference text that will be able to generate many different courses for many types of SLA audience. As one gains historical perspective on a discipline, it becomes clear that the challenge is to find the balance between recognizing how new theoretical approaches may illuminate old questions, and simultaneously holding the new theories’ feet to the fire to account for well-documented empirical facts. Gass & Selinker successfully steer this fraught course. This text is a guidebook which will allow teachers and students alike to both sample the highlights and explore the lesser-known nooks and crannies of the SLA terrain."

Dr. John Archibald, Professor and Head, Dept. of Linguistics, Member of the Language, Research Centre, Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Humanities, University Orator, University of Calgary

About the Author(s)

Susan M. Gass, Michigan State University and Larry Selinker, NYU

Susan Gass is University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian and African Languages at Michigan State University. She has conducted research in a wide variety of sub-areas of second language acquisition including language transfer, language universals, second language research methods, and input and interaction. She is the author/editor of numerous books, has served as the President of the American Association for Applied Linguistics and is the President of the International Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA).

Larry Selinker is one of the original contributors to the research field of Second Language Acquisition, having introduced the concepts "interlanguage" and "fossilization" and having conducted one of the first empirical studies in "language transfer" research in 1969. Consistently seeking a more unified account which would integrate concepts of "interdialect," "interculture," and "interliteracy" with new media, he is now preparing a 40-plus year fossilization study on participants first looked at in 1964. He has held professorships at the Universities of Michigan and London and visiting professorships at various universities around the world. Currently, he is Visiting Professor at New York University and, exploring processes of "around sourcing," is helping to organize Research Production Associates.

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