This work sheds new light on our understanding of verbal input available for learning in foreign-language classrooms, specifically the target language spoken by the teacher. The author's intent to make sense of such input from different theoretical and pedagogical perspectives than previously discussed is successfully accomplished in this compact volume. Nizegorodcew uses relevance theory (RT; Sperber & Wilson, Reference Sperber and Wilson1995), which is based on the maxim of relevance, one of the four Gricean conversational maxims, and suggests that the verbal input given by the foreign-language teacher be seen as a learning resource that learners interpret in such a way as to best satisfy their expectations.
The volume consists of six chapters, the first three of which prepare the ground theoretically for the remaining chapters that deal with empirical data and discuss pedagogical implications concerning second language (L2) classroom instructional input. It is definitely useful for “L2 teacher educators, L2 teachers and pre-service and in-service teacher-trainers” (p. xi), as the author specifies, because of its focused discussion on language used by foreign-language classroom teachers. This volume is also suitable for use in introductory seminars on the topic of L2 input because it provides a concise yet accurate account of all of the relevant issues, including cognitive and sociocultural interpretations as well as such instructional approaches as focus-on-meaning, focus-on-form, and focus-on-forms.
In short, the volume addresses the common phenomenon observed in L2 classrooms that focus exclusively on communication: “L2 learners focused on communication disregard correctness of L2 forms as long as they seem to be successful communicators” (p. 17). Two sides of language—the linguistic code or form and its semantic representations or meaning—are associated with accuracy and fluency of language use, respectively, and are given relevance-theoretic interpretations in terms of learning consequences. Depending on what learners think is relevant to them at a given moment, what they pay attention to can change. It then follows that if instruction or input in L2 classrooms is designed to draw the learner's attention to both form (accuracy) and meaning (fluency) of language, it moves to “a higher level of expected optimal relevance” (p. 20) and makes learners realize that they are not only expected simply to get their meaning across but also to focus on the correctness of their utterances in the L2.
Chapters 1, 2, and 3 investigate these issues of relevance from different angles. Chapter 1 discusses the role of L2 classroom input in the light of the existing models of SLA and RT. Chapter 2 does so from a teaching perspective, covering a range of issues such as fluency and accuracy practice, feedback and error correction, and the use of the first language (L1), whereas chapter 3 considers the matter from a classroom discourse perspective.
Chapter 4 presents L2 classroom discourse data collected in Polish secondary school English classrooms between 1984 and 2004, covering the 20-year period that witnessed a shift from form-focused to meaning-focused or communicative-oriented instruction in Poland. The data are reanalyzed and reinterpreted from the RT perspective in chapter 5, with a focus on instructional input or “the language intentionally presented by the teacher to facilitate the process of L2 learning” (p. 93). L2 teachers' utterances are viewed as a conflicting mix of instructional functions “between a focus on fluency and a focus on accuracy,” “between real and simulated communication,” and “between L2 and L1 use” (p. 93). According to the author, however, these apparent conflicts are mostly accountable on RT grounds; that is, they indicate different levels of expected optimal relevance of L2 instructional input provided explicitly and implicitly. In other words, L2 input can change the level of expected optimal relevance of classroom discourse, facilitating shifts in the learner's attention from meaning to form and from form to meaning. Chapter 6 offers implications of the RT approach to L2 classroom discourse for balanced instruction, with a focus on both meaning and form. In the concluding section of this chapter, these implications are presented as a list of five functions fulfilled by the teacher.
This work is theoretically convincing and practically useful. It is also a highly readable volume. Although the dichotomous presentation of the subject matter might be seen as oversimplification, it helps to clarify the otherwise murky issues treated in the volume. As a matter of fact, the author's quest for keeping form-focused and meaning-focused instruction in equilibrium comes through more powerfully because of it.
