Susan Gass

• Michigan State University

First, we trace the history of second language acquisition (SLA) from early stages in the mid-twentieth century to today. We next consider the status of the field in today's research world with a particular focus on all aspects of methodology and, finally, we take a look at the future and discuss issues related to scientific rigor in light of Open...

This study represents program‐level action research. A U.S. university Spanish language program had a goal for students to reach the ACTFL (2012) Intermediate Mid level after 2 years. An empirical question that resulted after regular end‐of‐year testing was whether the students were doing their best on assessments. To investigate this, 253 end‐of‐s...

Captions provide a useful aid to language learners for comprehending videos and learning new vocabulary, aligning with theories of multimedia learning. Multimedia learning predicts that a learner's working memory (WM) influences the usefulness of captions. In this study, we present two eye-tracking experiments investigating the role of WM in captio...

The NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements describe what language learners can do at the various ACTFL proficiency sublevels. Unlike the European equivalent of the Can-Do Statements (the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages), few researchers have assessed the construct validity of the NCSSFL-ACTFL statements. Concerns have included whether...

The goal of this chapter is to acquaint the reader with basic principles and models of second language acquisition (SLA) and to review works that directly relate to Arabic. Because of the limitations of what is included in this paper, the interested reader is referred to other works that provide a comprehensive coverage of the field (e.g., Gass wit...

This is an ambitious work, covering the whole breadth of the field from its theoretical underpinnings to research and teaching methodology. The Editors have managed to recruit a stellar panel of contributors, resulting in the kind of 'all you ever wanted to know about instructed SLA' collection that should be found on the shelves of every good libr...

Grammaticality judgment tests (GJTs) have been used to elicit data reflecting second language (L2) speakers’ knowledge of L2 grammar. However, the exact constructs measured by GJTs, whether primarily implicit or explicit knowledge, are disputed and have been argued to differ depending on test-related variables (i.e., time pressure and item grammati...

This study investigates whether raters' knowledge of test takers' first language (L1) affects how the raters orient themselves to the task of rating oral speech. The authors qualitatively investigated the effects of accent familiarity on raters' score assignment processes. Twenty-six trained raters with a second language of Mandarin Chinese, Korean...

Eye-trackers are becoming increasingly widespread as a tool to investigate second language (L2) acquisition. Unfortunately, clear standards for methodology—including font size, font type, and placement of interest areas—are not yet available. Although many researchers stress the need for ecological validity—that is, the simulation of natural readin...

This study investigates caption-reading behavior by foreign language (L2) learners and, through eye-tracking methodology, explores the extent to which the relationship between the native and target language affects that behavior. Second-year (4th semester) English-speaking learners of Arabic, Chinese, Russian, and Spanish watched 2 videos differing...

1. Historical discussion 1.1 Attention and awareness in cognitive science and SLA Issues of attentiobear on every area of cognitivesciencè (Allport, 1989, p. 631). Attention, however, is not a unitary construct; many mechanisms have been proposed to explain how it affects different aspects of behavior and learning. Attentional mechanisms have been...

Based on evidence that listeners may favor certain foreign accents over others (Gass & Varonis, 1984; Major, Fitzmaurice, Bunta, & Balasubramanian, 2002; Tauroza & Luk, 1997) and that language-test raters may better comprehend and/or rate the speech of test takers whose native languages (LIs) are more familiar on some level (Carey, Mannell, & Dunn,...

This study investigated whether raters' second language (L2) background and the first language (L1) of test takers taking the TOEFL iBT® Speaking test were related through scoring. After an initial 4-hour training period, a group of 107 raters (mostly of learners of Chinese, Korean, and Spanish), listened to a selection of 432 speech samples that 7...

Funding for this project was provided by federal grants (nos. P229A990012 and P229A020001) from the U.S. Department of Education to the Center of Language Education and Research (CLEAR) at Michigan State University. We would like to thank Carolina Holtheuer and Maria Alvarez-Torres for help with data gathering and transcription and Maria Alvarez-To...

This article constitutes the first empirical assessment of methodological quality in second language acquisition (SLA). We surveyed a corpus of 174 studies (N = 7,951) within the tradition of research on second-language interaction, one of the longest and most influential traditions of inquiry in SLA. Each report was coded for methodological featur...

This study investigated the effects of captioning during video-based listening activities. Second- and fourth-year learners of Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, and Russian watched three short videos with and without captioning in randomized order. Spanish learners had two additional groups: one watched the videos twice with no captioning, and another watc...

The intent of this chapter is to provide a selective overview of current second language acquisition (SLA) research. I begin by presenting several approaches to SLA, including formal linguistics, sociolinguistics/sociocultural theory and psycholinguistics. I then consider the roles of input, interaction, feedback and output as they relate to the ac...

The five papers in this issue cover a range of perspectives on the acquisition and use of the Spanish copulas ser and estar in a variety of contexts, including language contact, bilingual language acquisition, and classroom second language learning. The fact that these papers cite work in this area as far back as the early part of the 20th century...

This article begins with a review of second language acquisition research leading up to the 1997 article by Firth and Wagner. We argue that the Firth and Wagner article did not represent a new direction, but rather continued a type of argumentation that was already prevalent in the field at the time of the 1997 publication. We identify 3 issues as...

One of the authors of this commentary conducted her dissertation research (Gass, 1979) on relative clause (RC) acquisition and, with the exception of a pedagogical intervention study (Gass, 1982), has since then participated in the discussion of RC acquisition only from afar. Therefore, the opportunity to provide commentary is particularly welcome....

Implicit negative feedback has been shown to facilitate SLA, and the extent to which such feedback is given is related to a variety of task and interlocutor variables. The background of a native speaker (NS), in terms of amount of experience in interactions with nonnative speakers (NNSs), has been shown to affect the quantity of implicit negati...

This paper presents an overview of what has come to be known as the Interaction Hypothesis , the basic tenet of which is that through input and interaction with interlocutors, language learners have opportunities to notice differences between their own formulations of the target language and the language of their conversational partners. They also...

This paper investigates the effects of input and interaction as separate entities and in combination. We further investigate these effects as a function of different language areas. One hundred two learners of L2 Spanish were provided with input on (a) Spanish gender agreement (noun + adjective), (b) estar + location, and (c) seven vocabulary...

This study questions the extent to which attention differentially affects different parts of language and how this differential effect interacts with increased linguistic knowledge (i.e., proficiency). Thirty-four English speakers enrolled in Italian 1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-year foriegn language courses in the United States were placed into one of two...

This article examines sentence matching, a methodology frequently used in the second language (L2) literature to determine notions of grammaticality of nonnative speakers (NNS). Native speakers (NS) of French and L2 learners of French performed a sentence-matching task focusing on three areas of French grammar: adverb placement, subject-verb agreem...

Theoretical claims about the benefits of conversational interaction have been made by Gass (1997), Long (1996), Pica (1994), and others. The Interaction Hypothesis suggests that negotiated interaction can facilitate SLA and that one reason for this could be that, during interaction, learners may receive feedback on their utterances. An interesting...

This article explores form/meaning relationships, focussing on the use learners make of their internal L2 linguistic resources as a function of focus on meaning. Native speakers ofEnglish watched video segments 4 times while recording their own on-line rendition in Spanish. One group watched the same video 3 times and the other group watched differ...

Interaction has often been shown to have a positive effect on nonnative speakers' (NNS) comprehension of their second language (L2). Based on the fact that interaction gives learners an opportunity to modify their speech upon a signal of noncomprehension, it should also have a positive effect on native speakers' (NS) comprehension of NNSs. However,...

In this paper we address the need for replication studies in the field of second language acquisition and discuss the problems surrounding standards of reporting research. A particular focus is on the level of detail necessary for replication to take place. The lack of uniform standards is noted with specific examples of problematic reporting taken...

In this paper we address the need for replication studies in the field ofsecond language acquisition and discuss the problems surrounding standards of reportingresearch. A particular focus is on the level of detail necessary for replication to take place. Thelack of uniform standards is noted with specific examples of problematic reporting taken fr...

The ultimate goal of second language acquisition research is to come to an understanding of what is acquired and the mechanisms which bring that knowledge about. In recent years, the attempt to understand these issues has come from varying perspectives: some researchers have been concerned with language development as it relates to conversation; ot...