Spanish Second Language Acquisition ─ State of the Science

Seventeen American scholars provide second language acquisition researchers, scholars, graduate students, and practitioners with the first text to give a broad overview of research conducted during the past 25-plus years on Spanish second language acquisition (SLA) by adults. The text is organized by specific aspects of Spanish SLA (e.g., phonology, tense/aspect, subjunctive, clitics, lexicon, pragmatics/discourse), specific approaches to the second language data (e.g., generative, cognitive, and sociocultural) and the role of instruction in the development of Spanish second language systems. Annotation (c) Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Barbara A. Lafford is an associate professor of Spanish and Linguistics at Arizona State University and has published in the areas of Spanish sociolinguistics, second language acquisition (primarily lexical and discourse issues), second language pedagogy, the use of technology to enhance second language learning and the effects of study abroad experiences on the second language learner's acquisition process. She served as Associate Editor for the Applied Linguistics section ofHispania (1996-2002) and is the co-editor (with Michele Shockey) of Culture and Context: Perspectives on the Acquisition of Cultural Competence in the Foreign Language Classroom.

Rafael Salaberry is a professor of Spanish Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Texas in Austin. He is the author ofThe Development of Spanish Past Tense Morphology in a Classroom Environment and co-editor (with Yasuhiro Shirai) ofThe L2 Acquisition of Tense-Aspect Morphology. His main research interests are second language acquisition, second language assessment and the use of new technologies for pedagogical purposes. He is also the reviews editor of the journalLanguage Learning and Technology.