Customer Reviews
Excellent overview - By: Marco Polo, 02 Sep 2004 
An excellent overview of the field of second language acquisition & targeted at practising language teachers or trainee teachers. It is not a guide to SLA research methodology, nor is it an overall guide to language teaching methods, "only to those which connect with an SLA perspective."
Each chapter has some activity section, like a questionnaire to answer, or some provocative questions, so that the reader becomes more aware of their attitudes & beliefs about second language learning & teaching.
Each chapter is divided into a number of sections, & each major section begins with a short glossary of technical terms, which I found particularly helpful, as some of the sections are quite technical (e.g. the section on pronunciation). Each chapter ends with some discussion topics & suggestions for further reading.
The main topics are: grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, writing, memory (short-term, working, & longer-term), listening processes, codeswitching, motivation, individual factors that affect language acquisition, the different roles of second languagesin societies & some of the different goals of language teaching around the world, models of L2 learning (Universal Grammar, input hypothesis, etc), learning & teaching styles (academic, audio-lingual, communicative, mainstream EFL).
Cook has been Reader at the Department of Language & Linguistics at Essex University, UK, but is taking up a new post at the University of Newcastlein October 2004. Cook is not afraid of stickingin his own opinions, although he of course remains objective, as behoves an academic author. For instance, after a good general summary of CLL (community language learning), Cook adds: "The aim is not....to be able to do anything with languagein the world outside. It is to do something here & nowin the classroom, so that the student,in Curran's words, 'arrives at a more positive view of himself, of his situation, of what he wishes to do & to become' (Curran, 1976). A logical extension is the therapeutic use of language teaching for psychotherapyin mental hostipals."
A strong point of this book is the frequent references (indexed) to various EFL & ESL course books (over 50) publishedin the last 20 years or so, &in the first chapter there is a section on "technique analysis"in which the reader is guided to an analysis of a published textbook to discover the background assumptions of the activities, the type of language input (written, spoken, discourse or fragments, etc) & what activities the students actually do.
This book provides a very useful link between SLA research & classroom teaching through published textbooks taken from a wide variety of countries. Most of the book focuses on EFL "mainly because this is the chief language that has been investigatedin SLA research"; however there are frequent references to other languages, including Asian tongues, which often throw English (and other Romance languages) into relief. The layout, headings & indeces make it easily "random-accessed". Even if you have taken an MA coursein Applied Linguistics orin TESOL, you are sure to find something you did not know either about language, language acquisition or about your own teaching style & beliefs, & feel stimulated & encouraged to return to your classroom with refreshed curiosity & enthusiasm. (This review refers to the paperback 3rd edition, 2001).
Course Book - By: sixashes@aol.com, 12 Mar 2002 I have studied Second Language Acquisition as part of my Spanish & TESOL degree, & I found this book invaluable. It presents the informationin a particularly clear & lucid way.Unlike some other couse books on this subject, the author's arguments are objective, not subjective. I can thoroughly recommend this as a course book for TESOL, or for anyone with an enquiring mind & an interestin languages.
