With language pedagogy as their starting point, Ellis and Shintani use this volume to examine the connections (and sometimes the disconnect) between the practice of language teaching and SLA research and theory. Divided into three main parts (in addition to an introduction and a conclusion), the volume investigates the relationship between language pedagogy and SLA from an external perspective (Part 2) and from an internal perspective (Part 3) before turning to how learner individual differences are catered to and/or addressed both within the classroom and within empirical research (Part 4). Each chapter is followed by discussion questions that help the reader digest the information covered and make the volume a welcome tool for classroom use.
Eleven principles of instructed language learning are presented in the Introduction chapter and provide the structure around which teaching practices are discussed and compared in the rest of the volume. These principles, which are drawn from Ellis (2003), succinctly summarize main tenets of SLA theory and findings of SLA research; they include, for example, the importance of a focus on meaning (Principle 2) but without neglecting focus on form (Principle 3), the centrality of the development of implicit knowledge but not at the expense of also considering the development of explicit knowledge (Principle 4), and the need for extensive input (Principle 6) and output (Principle 7) opportunities in the second language (L2).
From here, the volume examines language pedagogy and SLA from an external perspective—discussing the approaches, methods, and techniques that have defined and constituted language teaching over the last several decades. Throughout, the authors appear to be guided by the belief that “one way of evaluating the claims of different methods is by examining to what extent they are compatible with what is known about how learners learn an L2” (p. 31). The authors offer broad coverage of different approaches and practices, evaluating, for example, the audiolingual method and the use of different types of syllabuses (e.g., grammatical vs. notional vs. lexical) in relation to recent findings in SLA research, before dedicating a full chapter to the task-based language teaching (TBLT) approach. Despite the authors’ renowned support for TBLT (apparent, too, in their treatment of this approach and its critics), they also concede that, on a practical level, TBLT is not always easy to implement for a variety of reasons.
After examining teaching and research from an external perspective, the authors adopt an internal approach in Part 3, discussing (each in its own chapter) concepts such as input, interaction, and feedback, and practices such as using the first language in the L2 classroom. As with Part 2’s external perspective, the authors first approach these concepts from a pedagogical position before examining how the established pedagogical treatment of such ideas matches or not the findings of relevant SLA research. The chapter on teaching as interaction (Chapter 8) is especially insightful in its comparison of the common pedagogical view of interaction in terms of practical concerns such as teacher involvement, student participation, and group work to the theoretical accounts of the importance of interaction, such as Long’s (1983, 1996) interaction hypothesis and Swain’s (2000) sociocultural approach. The authors conclude that “together these two approaches to understanding and investigating interaction and its roles in L2 learning can enrich our conceptualization of language pedagogy” (p. 223).
One of the most refreshing aspects of the volume is the authors’ careful consideration of the logic and value behind certain teaching practices, even when practices greatly mismatched accepted findings in language acquisition research. By refusing to dismiss and, what is more, recognizing the value of certain practices in the face of this disconnect, the authors provide a thoughtful, reasoned, and insightful account of the relationship between language pedagogy and SLA research and theory that is accessible and valuable to language teachers and SLA researchers alike. The authors conclude by signaling the need for additional work in the development of the practical discourse related to language teaching that draws from theoretical accounts of how languages should be taught and how languages are learned. This call for future work, relevant to SLA researchers and L2 teachers, paves the way for the potential to increase the accessibility and applicability of SLA research in everyday teaching practices and to bring teaching practices more in line with what we know about how L2s are learned.
