The main purpose of this article is to review studies that have investigated the effects of three types of planning (rehearsal, pre-task planning, and within-task planning) on the fluency, complexity, and accuracy of L2 performance. All three types of planning have been shown to have a beneficial effect on fluency but the results for complexity…

This article is a response to Sheen and O'Neill's (2005) critique of our paper entitled "Teachers' stated beliefs about incidental focus on form and their classroom practice" (Basturkmen et al., 2004). In addition, it seeks to clarify a number of common misunderstandings about focus on form (e.g. that "form" refers exclusively to grammar and that…

This article re-examines the question of what makes some grammatical structures more difficult to learn than others, arguing that this question can only be properly understood and investigated with reference to the distinction between implicit and explicit knowledge of a second language. Using a battery of tests that were designed to measure…

This article reports a case study investigating the relationship between three teachers' stated beliefs about and practices of focus on form in intermediate level ESL communicative lessons. Focus on form was defined and studied in terms of incidental time-outs taken by students and teachers to deal with issues of linguistic form during…

Investigated the effects of both pre-task and on-line planning on second language (L2) oral production. Results show that pre-task planning enhances grammatical complexity while on-line planning positively influences accuracy and grammatical complexity. Pre-task planners also produced more fluent and lexically varied language than the on-line…

A key aspect of the acquisition of grammar for second language learners involves learning how to make appropriate connections between grammatical forms and the meanings which they typically signal. We argue that learning form/function mappings involves three interrelated principles. The first is the Given-to-New Principle, where existing world…

Truscott [Truscott, J., 1996. "The case against grammar correction in L2 writing classes.' "Language Learning" 46, 327-369; Truscott, J., 1999. "The case for "the case for grammar correction in L2 writing classes": a response to Ferris." "Journal of Second Language Writing" 8, 111-122] laid down the challenge to teacher educators and teachers to…

This article represents an attempt to draw together findings from a range of second language acquisition studies in order to formulate a set of general principles for language pedagogy. These principles address such issues as the nature of second language (L2) competence (as formulaic and rule-based knowledge), the contributions of both focus on…

Provides an explanation for the existence of free variation in learner language. Argues that interlanguage is best conceptualized as sets of loose lexical networks that are gradually reorganized into a system or systems. Free variation arises when learners add items to those they have already acquired and before they analyze these items and…

Examines the theoretical rationales (universal grammar, information-processing theories, skill-learning theories) for input-based grammar teaching and reviews classroom-oriented research (i.e., enriched-input studies, input-processing studies) that has integrated this option. (Author/VWL)

Longitudinal data regarding three children's learning of English as a second language in a classroom setting support the hypothesis that the distribution of grammatical variants in learner speech is sensitive to linguistic context. Results suggest that the learners acquired the target language variants in "pronoun contexts" before "noun contexts."…

Responds to a previous article that attacks variabilists' accounts of second-language acquisition (SLA) by addressing the following issues: (1) the context dependency of theory in SLA research; (2) the competency performance distinction; (3) the problem of data in SLA research; and (4) explanations of SLA. (Author/VWL)

Studied the relationship between modified oral input and the acquisition of word meanings by Japanese high school students. Results include a strong relationship between comprehension and word meaning acquisition was only evident in a test replicating learning format; and rate of word acquisition was faster with the premodified input. (54…