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A Commentary on “Proactive Language Learning Theory”
... Instead, that statement highlights the role of the learner in determining the quality of learning through interaction. Some learners can engage in L2 interaction without paying attention to building their "interactional repertoires through employing communicative affordances like turntaking, sequence organization, and repair," (Atkinson, 2025) among other things (vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, etc.). Others may proactively seek, engage with, and closely analyze their interaction patterns to make the best use of the opportunity and enhance their interaction skills as a result. ...
We thank Dwight Atkinson for his thought-provoking commentary, which invites us into dialogue and provides an important opportunity to clarify points regarding the assumptions underlying proactive language learning theory (PLLT). Insightful discourse and scholarly exchange of ideas undoubtedly benefit the field and help us approach a much-needed basic consensus in second language acquisition (SLA) theory, which we believe PLLT helps to provide. Below, we discuss Atkinson's observations and offer clarification about the foundational principles of PLLT.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Stephen Krashen developed Monitor Theory—a group of hypotheses explaining second language acquisition with implications for language teaching. As the L2 scholarly community began considering what requirements theories
should meet, Monitor Theory was widely criticized and dismissed, along with its teaching implications. What happened to these ideas? We argue that many of them have evolved and are still driving SLA research today— often unacknowledged and under new terminology. In this essay, we focus on three of Krashen's five fundamental hypotheses: The Acquisition‐Learning Distinction, The Natural Order Hypothesis, and The Input Hypothesis. We argue that these ideas persist today as the following constructs: implicit versus explicit learning, ordered development, and a central role for communicatively embedded input in all theories of second language acquisition. We conclude with implications for language teaching, including a focus on comprehensible input and communication in the classroom.
It is widely assumed that the cognitivist era is over in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) studies. This critical review essay (a) questions this assumption, (b) presents alternative views from beyond the field to help it move in a noncognitivist direction, and (c) discusses prospects for a noncognitivist future in SLA studies. I begin by briefly reviewing the history of cognitivism, by which I mean a mind/brain‐centric view of human existence and behavior. I then argue that SLA studies remain under cognitivist influence. Next, I review 2 recent books that offer strong theoretical and empirical bases for studying the embodied, affective, social, and ecological nature of human action, including learning and teaching. The first book, Meyer, Streeck, and Jordan's (2017) co‐edited Intercorporeality, explores the consequences of being a body in a world of other such bodies, versus the cognitivist vision of disembodied mind/brain. The second book, Goodwin's (2018a) Co‐operative Action, develops and empirically illustrates a theory of social action wherein heterogeneous, multimodal cultural tools and practices including language combine, accumulate, and transform in moment‐to‐moment use. Both books view human existence and action as fundamentally “ecosocial”—embodied, affective, and adaptive to human and nonhuman environments—yet they differ markedly in content and implications. Goodwin's painstaking empirical analyses, for instance, including of teaching and learning, show co‐operative action unfolding in real time. I conclude by discussing current developments in SLA studies that point toward a noncognitive future for the field.
A key insight of a transdisciplinary perspective on second language acquisition (SLA) as articulated by the Douglas Fir Group (2016) is its usage‐based understanding of language. Evidence on the fundamental role that usage plays in shaping individual language knowledge is no doubt compelling. However, while the force of social interaction in shaping language knowledge is acknowledged, missing are specifications of the jointly constructed actions and courses of action comprising social contexts of use. Also missing is a reconsideration of key SLA concepts engendered by a usage‐based understanding of language. The intent of this paper is to redress these limitations. First, I summarize the research programs of conversation analysis and interactional linguistics, which take as their central task the specifications of the jointly constructed actions and courses of action comprising social contexts and thus significantly enhance a usage‐based understanding of language. Then, arguing that more suitable conceptual tools are needed to better capture current understandings of language knowledge and objects of L2 learning, I offer repertoire, semiotic resources, and register as alternative terms to competence and grammar. I conclude with a proposal for a Conversation Analysis/Interactional Linguistics‐based research program for further advancing understandings of SLA and transforming understandings of L2 pedagogy.
Sociolinguistics and Second Language Acquisition is a comprehensive textbook that bridges the gap between the fields of sociolinguistics and second language acquisition, exploring the variety of ways in which social context influences the acquisition of a second language. It reviews basic principles of sociolinguistics, provides a unified account of the multiple theoretical approaches to social factors in second languages, summarizes the growing body of empirical research, including examples of findings from a wide range of second languages, and discusses the application of sociolinguistics to the second language classroom. Written for an audience that extends beyond specialists in the field, complete with summary tables, additional readings, discussion questions, and application activities throughout, this volume will serve as the ideal textbook for advanced undergraduate or graduate students of second language acquisition and instruction, and will also be of interest to researchers in the fields of second language acquisition, second language instruction and sociolinguistics.
Synergies in second language acquisition and teaching [Special issue]
- Atkinson D.