As its title suggests, this is an introductory and resource book that seeks to assist students and researchers to understand some of the main conceptual and methodological issues in the study of bilingualism. To assist and simplify the learning process, this book is divided into three intuitive sections. Section 1 provides a general and comprehensive overview of such classical topics as bilingual acquisition, bilingualism and cognitive ability, and attitudes and bilingualism. Each topic is covered extensively with ample examples and clear writing. Chin and Wigglesworth have no preconceived notions about the background of the reader and effortlessly simplify highly complex linguistic principles into comprehensible explanations that make sense, even to nonlinguists and nonacademics. Section 2 provides a more in-depth analysis of the topics introduced in section 1 by introducing and reproducing published articles that influenced the field of bilingualism. Indeed, this section could be best described as a critical discussion of seminal readings that changed the study of bilingualism. Chin and Wigglesworth do an extraordinary job in critically discussing, analyzing, dissecting, and skillfully guiding the reader through each paragraph of the reproduced research article. This will be of great help to students of bilingualism and nonscholars unaccustomed to reading such cumbersome and, at times, confusing research articles. Section 3, rightly labeled “Exploration,” provides a hands-on approach by describing the various research methodologies—both qualitative and quantitative—used in bilingual research. In short, this section could be best classified as a basic introduction to research methods in bilingualism, and it would be of particular interest to beginning bilingual researchers who seek to become acquainted with the various questionnaires and language scales used to measure such variables as language proficiency and bilingual creativity as related to bilingualism and cognitive ability (see Simonton, Reference Simonton, Altarriba and Heredia2008, for an excellent discussion of bilingualism and creativity).
Although very accessible and straightforward, this introductory book is somewhat limited in that it fails to address some of the prevalent and current topics in the cognitive psycholinguistic literature, such as bilingual language representations, bilingual memory storage, and bilingual language production, among others. Thus, it appears that this book’s targeted audience is mainly applied linguists and L2 researchers. Moreover, Chin and Wigglesworth could have done a better job of selecting more current readings to showcase in section 2 as well as other highly influential publications by psycholinguists and cognitive psychologists that deserved to be mentioned.
In all, this work is an important publication. Bilingual students and researchers would benefit from this book, especially those interested in more pedagogical and sociolinguistic issues. In comparison to the handful of recently published books in bilingualism (e.g., Altarriba & Heredia, Reference Altarriba and Heredia2008; Li, Reference Li2009; Li & Moyer, Reference Li and Moyer2008; Myers-Scotton, Reference Myers-Scotton2006), this work is definitely one of the top five. In short, this book is highly recommended, particularly for cognitive psychologists and psycholinguists who are not very well acquainted with the area of bilingualism as seen and studied by L2 researchers, educators, and applied linguists. Finally, any class in bilingualism or the psychology of bilingualism must include this book. It is a well-written book from which advanced undergraduate and graduate students would greatly benefit.
