Big Ideas

Rod Ellis gives a brief overview in 2020 of the history of SLA (Second Language Acquisition) research

Rod Ellis

Geoff Jordan writes about what makes a good second language acquisition theory

Geoff Jordan

Florence Myles provides a good overview of the main strands of research in the last few decades. Are first and second language acquisition essentially the same? Do humans have an innate a mental language faculty which constrains the shape that human languages can take? Is learning a language unique, or similar to the learning of any complex skill? Is language learning mainly a sociocultural phenomenon? What does this mean for teachers?

Florence Myles

Rod Ellis in 2005 examines the notions of implicit and explicit knowledge and how they can be measured reliably

Rod Ellis

Richard Schmidt writes in 1988 about the role of consciousness in second language learning

Richard Schmidt

Michael Tomasello's "Construction Grammar for Kids". An essay relating to child language acquisition.

Michael Tomasello

This 1998 article by Scott Thornbury looks at the Lexical Approach, its merits and possible limitation. Is it all chunks, no pineapple?

Scott Thornbury

Jeffrey Lidz defends the Chomskyan view of language in a 2016 article in Scientific American

Jeffrey Lidz

This Nick Ellis article puts forward the case that learning a language is just like any form of learning. He explains what is meant by emergentism

Nick Ellis

Nick Ellis explores the interplay of explicit and implicit language learning

Nick Ellis

A brief history of attitudes to conscious and unconscious second language learning from the Language Teacher Toolkit blog

What is Universal Grammar? Ewa Dabrowska, in a review article, discusses the arguments for and against

Ewa Dabrowska

The theory of Universal Grammar described by Vivian Cook

Vivian Cook

What is skill acquisition? Masumeh Taie's article assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the theory

Masumeh Taie

Vivian Cook summarises Stephen Krashen's influential hypotheses

Vivian Cook

What is processing instruction? Victoria Russell of the ACTFL describes it in a brief article

Victoria Russell

What do we know about aptitude for second language learning? This 2017 article from Wen, Bledron and Skehan cites examines the latest models in the research field

Wen, Bledron and Skehan

Robert Schmidt explains the Noticing Hypothesis from a paper presented in 2010

Robert Schmidt

How important is the frequency with which students hear, read or practise language structures, patterns, sounds, etc, tied up with their successful acquisition? What could this mean for general theories of second language acquisition? In this detailed article Nick Ellis reviews and examines the role of frequency and learners' sensitivity to it

Nick Ellis

Gianfranco Conti compares the Grammar-Translation approach with Communicative Language Teaching

Gianfranco Conti

Foreign language aptitude - yesterday and today. From Wen (2016) who believes working memory plays a significant role

Wen (2016)

In this article Liang Aimin describes socio-cultural theory (particularly Vygotsky) and its implications for language teaching pedagogy

Liang Aimin