There are many ways of teaching a foreign language. When a teacher chooses one method or approach from all the varieties, he or she has at least some kind of reason for it. However, it is possible to validate the choice of one method over another by measuring the actual effectiveness of the teaching. This volume thus serves as an aid to foreign language teachers, especially those teaching Japanese.

This volume represents a combination of theory, practice, and research. It starts with a literature review of SLA, followed by an introduction of communicative language teaching and focus on form, and the effects of processing instruction are examined along with many ideas of structured input activities for the classroom. Finally, the fundamentals of conducting research as well as the actual data from a study conducted by Benati are presented to help readers become independent researchers.

This is an extensive volume that covers a wide range of topics, which means that each issue is dealt with rather superficially. This lack of depth was unavoidable because, for each of the seven chapters, the topic is so dense that it could easily be expanded to a whole volume. Therefore, those readers who are already familiar with SLA, and especially with processing instruction and structured input activities, may find this volume rather insufficient. However, it is suitable for those currently teaching Japanese as a foreign language and who are not yet acquainted with SLA but willing to incorporate SLA theory into their own teaching and examine its effectiveness for themselves.

One of the shortcomings of this volume lies in the frequent errors in Japanese in sample activities. It is a pity that careful proofing of Japanese did not take place.