THE SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION OF SPANISH GENDER AGREEMENT: THE EFFECTS OF LINGUISTIC VARIABLES ON ACCURACY.Irma Alarcón. Munich: Lincom Europa, 2006. Pp. vi + 130. $52.00 paper.

This volume, a published dissertation, presents an empirical investigation into Spanish gender agreement among second language (L2) learners whose first language (L1) is English. Although the acquisition of grammatical gender has recently been the focus of many studies within the generative paradigm (cf. White, Valenzuela, Kozlowska-Macgregor, & Leung, 2004), Alarcón adopts a psycholinguistic approach to determine how certain linguistic variables contribute to learners' accuracy in this area of grammatical processing. In order to limit the scope of investigation, the author focuses on gender agreement between subject nouns and predicate adjectives.

ISSUES IN TESTING BUSINESS ENGLISH: THE REVISION OF THE CAMBRIDGE BUSINESS ENGLISH CERTIFICATES. Barry O'Sullivan. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. xiv + 394. $34.00 paper.

Testing language for specific purposes (LSP) is critical for understanding how an individual's language performances might vary from situation to situation, with different test tasks, or both. Researchers and language test practitioners are faced with a complex task when designing field-specific tests and implementing viable test methods in which field-specific contextual constraints arise. This volume reviews the challenges and changes to accommodating these influences and provides methodologies for the revision of the Business English Certificates (BEC). Divided into five chapters, the volume opens with a brief historical introduction to the testing of language for business purposes. The first chapter seeks to provide an overview of some of the central issues in LSP facing language testers today by embedding practical considerations in a theoretical context and by reviewing tests of business language (e.g., Test of English for International Communication, Pitman Qualifications, and London Chamber of Commerce and Industry Examinations Board tests). Also discussed are tests of language for business and commerce in languages other than English. From a systematic point of view, the volume discusses the construct upon which each test focuses, the test method, skills coverage, measurement qualities, degree of specificity and situational authenticity, impact of nonlanguage factors, and score reporting. Furthermore, the development of business English testing at the Cambridge English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL; e.g., Certificate in English as a Foreign Language for Secretaries, Certificate in English for International Business and Trade, Oxford International Business English Certificate, and Business Language Testing System) is discussed at length.

AGE IN L2 ACQUISITION AND TEACHING.Christián Abello-Contesse, Rubén Chacón-Beltrán, M. Dolores López-Jiménez, and M. Mar Torreblanca-López (Eds.). Bern: Peter Lang, 2006. Pp. 220. $45.95 paper.

This volume deals with issues related to the effects of age in foreign language learning, immersion programs, and situations in which parents are trying to raise their children as bilinguals. The critical period hypothesis (CPH) receives a great deal of attention throughout the volume, and some attention is also given to more general effects of maturation that might occur independently of any critical period. A recurring thread throughout the work is the authors' reaction to the popular belief that children are superior to adults in their ability to acquire languages. Many of the chapters that address this claim point to research that shows that children's advantage is restricted to their ultimate levels of attainment in the target language, whereas adults quite often outperform children at particular stages of acquisition. Several of the authors also refer to empirical research that shows little or no advantage to having children begin their foreign language studies prior to adolescence.

INTERFACES IN MULTILINGUALISM.Conxita Lleó (Ed.). Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2006. Pp. vii + 283. $90.00 cloth.

This volume includes papers from two bilingualism and multilingualism colloquia held at the Research Center on Multilingualism at the University of Hamburg. All of the papers discuss the interface of diverse areas of linguistics that are usually discussed and debated independently. As Lleó mentions in the foreword, although these phenomena are indeed interesting when studied separately, the results are even more fascinating when the interactions between the subgroups are examined.

PROGRESSIVES, PATTERNS, AND PEDAGOGY: A CORPUS-DRIVEN APPROACH TO ENGLISH PROGRESSIVE FORMS, FUNCTIONS, CONTEXTS AND DIDACTICS.Ute Römer. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2005. Pp. xi + 328. $156.00 cloth.

The 18th volume in the Studies in Corpus Linguistics series, this work is a welcome contribution to the fields of corpus linguistics and language teaching. The volume, based on Römer's dissertation, thoroughly describes the results of two related, corpus-driven studies that provide a detailed description of the progressive in natural use in addition to its use in so-called school English. The first study is a comparison of two spoken corpora of native-speaker British English (both conversation), whereas the second is an analysis of school English, a corpus of conversational English appearing in two English as a foreign language textbook series used in Germany. The beginning chapters (2 and 3) provide the theoretical rationale, followed by the methods and results (4–6), and the final chapters (7 and 8) conclude the volume with pedagogical implications and general conclusions.

SUBJECTIVITY IN A SECOND LANGUAGE: CONVEYING THE EXPRESSION OF SELF.Alan J. E. Wolf. Bern: Peter Lang, 2006. Pp. 248. $52.95 paper.

Wolf's monograph, based on his dissertation, examines ways in which native and nonnative speakers of French use subjectivity markers in personal narratives and in argumentative discourse. This inquiry has two main aims: to identify markers of subjectivity and to see how native and nonnative speakers might differ in the use of these markers.

PROBLEMS IN SLA.Michael H. Long. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2007. Pp. v + 201. $75.95 cloth, $27.50 paper.

Long's lengthy and productive career as a specialist in SLA affords him exceptional experience and perspective to write about the field, and his latest work does not disappoint. This volume is divided into three sections of unequal lengths: “Theory,” “Research,” and “Practice.” There is a copious list of references, and Long introduces many interesting citations and topics that are new, even to a veteran scholar like me.

THE ACQUISITION OF THE CHINESEBA-CONSTRUCTION.Hang Du. Munich: Lincom Europa, 2006. Pp. 185. 64.20€.

Ubiquitous but elusive, the Chinese ba-construction has attracted a great deal of attention in Chinese linguistics, but its acquisition by second language (L2) learners has not been investigated systematically. This monograph, based on the author's doctoral dissertation, presents an interesting and innovative treatment of the acquisition of the Chinese ba-construction by native speakers of English. The volume fills a gap in the literature by investigating learners' sensitivity to the constraints on nominal phrases with ba (ba-NP) and verbal phrases with ba (ba-VP). An example of a ba-construction is given in (1), where the functional morpheme ba precedes the object, which, in turn, precedes the verb:

TEACHER EDUCATION IN CALL.Philip Hubbard and Mike Levy (Eds.). Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2006. Pp. xxiii + 113. $24.50 paper.

Hubbard and Levy have compiled this expansive edited volume on teacher education in computer-assisted language learning (CALL) as part of Spada and Hulstjin's “Language Learning and Teaching” series. This volume, which compiles theoretical and practical solutions as well as data-driven arguments for the inclusion of CALL in teacher training curricula, is not for teachers who want to learn about CALL; it is aimed at professionals who provide, or want to provide, CALL training to language teachers.

IDEAS AND OPTIONS IN ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES.Helen Basturkmen. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2006. Pp. xi + 186. $19.95 paper.

Various approaches to teaching English for specific purposes (ESP) are examined in this volume, with a view toward encouraging readers to take a critical stance. The work aims to fill a gap in the existing ESP literature, which Basturkmen argues has “tended to focus on practical issues” rather than on “ideas of learning languages for specific purposes” (p. 5). Another goal is to investigate whether “ESP has been a force for accommodation” (p. 6), serving the interests of discourse communities rather than ESP learners themselves.