The Study of Second Language Acquisition

Citation

Ellis, R. (2008). The Study of Second Language Acquisition (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.

Chapter Summary

Scope and Approach

This is a very large reference volume, about 1,140 pages, that surveys forty years of research on how people learn a second language. It is a revised and expanded version of Rod Ellis's 1994 book of the same title, and it is intended as a coherent account of both research and theory rather than a collection of separate papers. Rod Ellis, the author, is an applied linguist who has worked in Zambia, the United Kingdom, Japan and the United States and was at the University of Auckland when this edition appeared; he has also published language-teaching materials and books on teacher education. The book is organised in eight parts, and it includes chapters on instructed second language acquisition, so that classroom learning is treated as part of the field rather than as an afterthought. A glossary and an extensive bibliography sit at the back.

Learner Language

One major area is the description of learners' language: what learners actually produce as they move towards the target language, and how researchers have analysed it. This area includes a critical assessment of error analysis, one of the earliest methods used to study learner speech and writing. It is the descriptive base on which the later explanatory sections rest.

The Linguistic Environment and Social Context

A second area asks how the input learners receive, the interaction they take part in and the wider social setting shape acquisition. Its focus is on the conditions under which the language is encountered, as distinct from the learner's own mind.

Internal Mechanisms

A third area turns to what happens inside the learner. The book represents several perspectives on these mechanisms, including cognitive, linguistic, sociocultural and neurolinguistic accounts, and it presents them side by side so that their claims and evidence can be compared.

Individual Learner Differences

The book then considers why learners of the same language differ in speed and success, and what research has established about the characteristics of individual learners.

The Role of Instruction

The final main area addresses teaching. It reviews research on whether and how instruction affects acquisition, which makes the book relevant to teacher educators as well as to researchers.

Key Concepts

Topic Areas Named in the Book's Scope

• Learner language: the language produced by learners at each stage, treated as a system worth describing in its own right.
• Input, interaction and social context: the external conditions of learning, studied through the linguistic environment and the learner's social setting.
• Internal mechanisms: the cognitive and neurological processes proposed to explain how a second language develops.
• Individual differences: the learner characteristics that help explain varying outcomes.
• Instructed second language acquisition: research on how formal teaching interacts with the natural course of learning.
• Plural perspectives: cognitive, linguistic, sociocultural and neurolinguistic approaches, represented in the same volume.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Breadth in one place. The book covers description, environment, internal mechanisms, learner differences and instruction in a single account, so a reader does not need to assemble the field from several shorter texts.
• Balance of perspectives. The author deliberately represents cognitive, linguistic, sociocultural and neurolinguistic approaches instead of advocating a single theory.
• Reception. A 2010 review in the journal System called the book an exceptionally successful synthesis and survey of SLA research and noted that, although revised and expanded, it remains accessible. The same review describes its eight clearly divided parts, which make it easier to enter at the area a reader needs.
• Reference apparatus. The glossary and the long bibliography make it useful for locating primary sources.

Limitations

• Length. At over 1,100 pages, the volume is a reference rather than a quick introduction, and it is demanding as a cover-to-cover read.
• Date. The survey was completed in 2008, so research from the following years, including later debates in the field, falls outside it.
• Assumed background. The book is written for readers who already know basic linguistic terminology and have met second language acquisition in an introductory course.

Where It Fits in the Course

In the applied linguistics course this is the most exhaustive of the second language acquisition books. Lightbown and Spada's How Languages Are Learned is a short, accessible introduction to the same questions and is the better first read. H. Douglas Brown and Heekyeong Lee's Principles of Language Learning and Teaching surveys SLA research for language teachers and relates theories to classroom practice. VanPatten, Keating and Wulff's Theories in Second Language Acquisition is an edited volume in which researchers associated with each theory present it in a common structure, which suits a reader who wants to compare theories directly. Schmitt and Rodgers's An Introduction to Applied Linguistics places SLA within the wider discipline.

Ellis is the book to move to after one of those introductions, when a topic needs fuller treatment or a literature review needs a map of the field.

How to Use This Book

It suits graduate students in applied linguistics and TESOL, teacher educators and researchers preparing dissertations or literature reviews. Read an introductory text first, because the volume does not slow down for beginners.

A practical plan:

• Start with the opening background part. It sketches how the field of second language acquisition developed and supplies the background for the later parts.
• Read by area, not front to back. Choose the part that matches the question at hand, whether learner language, the social setting, internal mechanisms, individual differences or instruction, and read it as a self-contained survey.
• Use the glossary and bibliography. Look up unfamiliar terms in the glossary, and use the bibliography to find the original studies behind claims you intend to cite.
• Compare perspectives deliberately. Where the book presents cognitive, sociocultural and other accounts of the same phenomenon, note where they agree and where they conflict, since this is the main skill that a dissertation chapter requires.
• Pair it with a shorter text for revision. A compact introduction is easier for exam review, while Ellis serves as the detailed reference behind it.

Teachers who want the evidence behind classroom claims about input, instruction and learner differences can go straight to the part on instruction and the part on individual differences.