This volume is a compilation of revised and expanded papers from the 2004 Colloquium on “Instructed Second Language Learning/L'appropriation d'une langue second en milieu guidé.” Nearly all of the assembled papers report on empirical studies that investigate second language (L2) production or acquisition by language learners in a range of formal instructional contexts, from elementary school immersion classes to adult and university foreign language courses. Following the editors' introduction, the 17 subsequent chapters are organized into four sections: (a) investigating cognitive and processing mechanisms in instructed SLA, (b) investigating the role and effects of form-focused instruction, (c) investigating the role and effects of interaction and communication-focused instruction, and (d) comparing the effects of instructed and naturalistic SLA contexts. Space constraints limit a thorough discussion of each of the papers, but a few noteworthy examples from each section will be discussed here.

Papers in the first two sections of the volume, aside from testing the bounds of speech processing and SLA theory, might hold implications for L2 teaching and curriculum considerations, particularly with regard to the characteristics of classroom language and the inclusion of explicit grammar instruction. For example, in their study of adult American learners of Russian, Gor and Chernigovskaya found evidence that explicit instruction of the complex verbal morphology of Russian promoted nativelike processing strategies when learners were confronted with invented words. Differences between native Russian speakers and the learners appeared to be a reflection of exposure, in that the frequency of different verb types that beginning learners are exposed to in classroom conditions differs markedly from verb class frequency in native Russian contexts.

Although Gor and Chernigovskaya's adult learners demonstrated, at best, improved explicit grammatical knowledge, Housen, Pierrard, and Van Daele's study of 14- to 15-year-old Dutch learners of French suggests a positive effect for explicit grammar instruction on both explicit and implicit grammatical knowledge. Sheen, using an even younger group of learners, 11- to 12-year-old elementary school students of English in Quebec, examined the effectiveness of explicit grammar instruction on interrogatives and adverb placement by contrasting an explicit focus-on-forms (FoFs) instructional approach with a communicative approach that included incidental focus-on-form (FoF) grammar treatment. Posttests revealed improvements in both aural-written comprehension and oral interviews for students who received explicit FoFs instruction that was not matched by students in the FoF condition. Perhaps the most notable contribution of Sheen's 8-month study is that it illustrates the potential inefficiency of an approach that relies purely on incidental error correction as a means of providing instructed language learners with focused information about target language forms.

Among the papers in the third section, Lochtman's is notable for its contribution to the body of research that describes the distribution of correction, feedback types, and learner responses in different instructional contexts. Lochtman found that learner uptake in a high school German as a foreign language class in Belgium differed from that documented in L2 French immersion classes in Canada (Lyster & Ranta, 1997). Lochtman attributes this difference to the learners' greater experience in language learning (German was their third foreign language) and to the conditions of a learning context with a greater focus on linguistic forms.

Part 4, the volume's shortest and most loosely related section, consists of only two papers, which go beyond investigations of classroom instructional treatments to compare instructed and naturalistic learning conditions. In the first paper, Howard contrasts the pragmatic development of Irish university learners of French both with and without the benefit of a year abroad. Findings showed that learners who had spent time abroad demonstrated greater appropriateness in the use of the French passé composé and imperfect tenses than did learners who had received only foreign language instruction. This section's second paper, by Dewaele, is a noteworthy survey study of perceived force and self-use of swear words in a L2 or subsequent language; it is the only paper in this collection that considers learners of non-European languages.

The greatest drawback of this edited volume is its cost, which, although bearable for a comprehensive handbook, is prohibitively high for a collection of studies. Nonetheless, by bringing together research on a range of target languages—although predominantly European—and research on both child and adult learners, the works in this collection make a valuable contribution to instructed SLA research.