Having focused previously on attention, cognitively oriented investigations of interlanguage variation and development are turning toward other possible explanatory variables, such as planning. The present study reports on an experiment in which two groups of 20 Japanese learners of English as a second language performed two monologic production tasks with and without time for planning. It was found that providing learners with time to plan their utterances results in interlanguage productions which are more complex in the short run.

In this study we compared two methods for correcting language transfer errors in the foreign language classroom. Thirty-two English-speaking college students enrolled in two sections of an introductory French course served as subjects. Eight commonly encountered English-to-French transfer errors were identified and randomly assigned to one of two teaching conditions for one class section; each error was assigned to the opposite condition for the other section. In both teaching conditions students began by translating English sentences into French. The sentences were such that an L1 (first language) transfer strategy produced correct translations (e.g., using savoir for some uses of “to know”). A sentence for which the transfer would not produce an adequate translation (e.g., a sentence requiring connaître) was then introduced in one of two ways. In one condition—what we have termed the Garden Path condition—students were given the new sentence and asked to translate as before. Their inevitable transfer error was then immediately corrected by the teacher. In the control condition students were simply given the correct French form and told that it differed from the English pattern (they were not given the opportunity to commit a transfer error). Student learning of the non-transferable form was assessed three times throughout the course of the semester, and at all time points performance was better in the Garden Path condition. We interpreted this finding as support for a cognitive comparison model of second language acquisition.

This article examines the role of negotiations of meaning in providing comprehensible input for NNS learners. We report on an experiment conducted with NS–NNS and NS–NS pairs involving a picture-drawing task, where one member of each pair instructed the other in the drawing of simple objects. The results of the experiment suggest that the success or failure of meaning negotiations in providing comprehensible input depends on the point in the discourse at which they occur. We therefore question a prevailing assumption in the second language acquisition literature that the mere quantity of meaning negotiations within a discourse is an accurate predictor of the quantity of comprehensible input that results. We propose that meaning negotiations should be analyzed within a discourse framework to explain their role in creating comprehensible input.

The L2 lexical proficiency of 69 grade 6 French immersion students is compared with that of 22 native French-speaking peers, based on verb use in five written compositions. Measures of lexical error, variety, specificity, and sophistication show clear differences between the two groups. The learners' patterns of use of verb vocabulary are considered in relation to frequency and utility in French, the degree of congruence between L2 and L1, and the morpho-syntactic complexity of some specific types of French verbs. Results are further discussed in relation to observational data from grade 6 immersion classrooms.

Although most of the theoretical work in second language acquisition (SLA) over the years has led to advancement of theories of developing grammars, some recent SLA research has begun to investigate how those grammars are actually learned, relevant to current theories of learnability. This article (a) considers some of the claims for learnability principles that have been proposed within the first language (L1) context and the problems associated with their application to SLA, (b) examines four second language (L2) phenomena with respect to a promising variety of learnability theory labeled preemption, and (c) suggests in what ways research on learnability in SLA can contribute to the further development of learnability theory in general.