This graduate level text on second language learning is divided into three sections. The first two sections provide a survey of the historical underpinnings of second language research in contrastive analysis and error analysis. The third section includes discussions of recent developments in the field. The first section contains articles on the contrastive analysis hypothesis, grammatical structures, sound systems, aspects of specific languages, adjectives, interference, discourse, and culture. The second section presents articles on the linguistic context of language teaching, error production, interlanguage, the significance of learners' errors, sources of errors, phonetic variability, and aspects of the general notion of error analysis. Section three discusses the universalist hypothesis, discourse function, adult second language learning, sequence and variation in second language acquisition, problems with error analysis, a characterization of English foreigner talk, an investigation of language registers and styles used by teachers, foreigner talk and conversational interaction, a model of discourse and correction of learners' errors, and teacher feedback and learners' errors. In addition to the articles, each section contains an introduction, questions designed to integrate the readings and facilitate discussion, and statements of problem areas. (AMH)