Second Language Acquisition: An Introductory Course - Tapa dura

"A tour de force. The authors have taken the best text available for an introductory course in second language acquisition (SLA) and made it even stronger.... The improvements in the third edition are palpable from the very beginning of the text ....The third edition of Second Language Acquisition: An Introductory Course should form the basis for any introduction to SLA, at either the graduate or undergraduate level." - Fred Eckman, Center for the Advanced Study of Language, University of Maryland

"Second Language Acquisition: An Introductory Course presents the most balanced, grounded, and accessible introduction to a broad field.... and a new, updated, and expanded edition is most welcome. In the third edition, Gass and Selinker’s overview of the field of SLA continues to be encyclopedic..." - Richard Young, Professor of English Linguistics, University of Wisconsin-Madison

"This reworking of Gass and Selinker's classic overview of second language acquisition (SLA) research makes an excellent introduction to, or review of, the field...a triumph of compendious ongoing synthesis."
- Tom Cobb, University of Montreal, Quebec

The new and updated edition of this bestselling introductory textbook is a comprehensive overview of the field of second language acquisition. In an easy-to-read, accessible style, it provides students with information about the scope of the field, but also provides background information on related areas such as first language acquisition. The book introduces students to current issues of data collection and data analysis, as well as providing a historical overview of the field, thus giving students context and perspective about how today's issues arise from earlier approaches.

Each chapter offers discussion questions and/or problems so that students can put their knowledge to use in a way that is relevant to what they have learned, but that also challenges them to go beyond what is in the chapter and to relate information across chapters.

The book covers a range of areas of second language research including sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic, and linguistic perspectives. It also includes a chapter on the lexicon and on instructed second language learning. The concluding chapter pulls the information in the previous chapters together into a coherent framework that challenges students to think about the field of second language acquisition as a whole.