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Talking About
Second Language
Acquisition
Karim Sadeghi
Talking About Second Language Acquisition
“This is a compilation of fascinating interviews conducted by Karim Sadeghi

with 14 scholars in the field of SLA, each a well-known expert in their own sub
field. What distinguishes this book is that each of the 14 chapters begins with
the scholar revealing their personal journey to becoming an applied linguist
before discussing their research interests, their contribution to the field, and
what they perceive as important issues and research directions. As such the book
succeeds in providing a very novel and engaging expose of key issues and key
scholars in the field of SLA – a combination rarely encountered in a book focus-
ing on topics in SLA.”
—Neomy Storch, Associate Professor, The University of Melbourne, Australia
“Karim Sadeghi successfully provides a captivating overview of the field of SLA

through this collection of interviews with fourteen specialists in specific areas of
SLA research. The interviewees first personalize their perspectives in terms of
relevant life experiences, then outline their own research contributions to the
field, and finally reflect on current and future trends in SLA. Bringing SLA
research to life through such a personalized approach promises to be an invalu-
able source of inspiration to burgeoning and seasoned scholars alike. Highly
recommended!”
—Roy Lyster, Professor Emeritus, McGill University, Canada
“These interviews with fourteen minds that have shaped the field of second lan-
guage acquisition are an intellectual feast and a treasure of historical memory
and future-looking insights. Both junior and senior scholars will find this book
fascinating!”
—Lourdes Ortega, Professor, Georgetown University, USA
“This book shows how a range of major contributors have helped the SLA field
to evolve over the past few decades. Both experienced and new researchers in the
field will find this a very useful resource to understand the past, present and
future of several key SLA topics. The personal voices of the contributors make
this an interesting read throughout.”
—Bimali Indrarathne, Dr., University of York, United Kingdom
Karim Sadeghi
Talking About
Second Language
Acquisition
Karim Sadeghi
English Language Department
Urmia University
Urmia, Iran
ISBN 978-3-030-99757-1 ISBN 978-3-030-99758-8 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99758-8
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I humbly dedicate this work to the Supreme Power, ALLAH, who created
‘language and thought’ and whatever else is in the universe: YOU made
‘language acquisition’ such an effortless and automatic process for us as
children that, despite possessing it, we as scholars have little information
about how it works and are yet to understand its true nature.
Foreword
A new academic discipline needs to establish itself. One way it can do this
is through state-of-the-art surveys of the field that announce its arrival
and serve as a record of achievement. The state-of-the-art surveys of sec-
ond language acquisition (SLA) began in 1985 with the publication of
my own Understanding Second Language Acquisition followed by Larsen-
Freeman and Long (1991), Cook (1993), Ellis (1994), Gass and Selinker
(2001), Ortega (2009), and others, several of which have gone through
more than one edition—in one case, as many as five! These single- or
dual-authored books were subsequently supplemented by edited hand-
books involving multiauthor contributions (e.g., Doughty & Long,
2003), reflecting, perhaps, the growing complexity of the field and the
inability of single or dual authors to address adequately all its subfields.
Increasingly, single authors have elected to focus on the specific subfield
of their particular expertise (e.g., input and interaction or individual dif-
ferences), surveying theory and research within that field.
As a new academic discipline, SLA has manifested uncertainty about
itself by asking such questions as ‘Is SLA a discipline?’, ‘If it is a disci-
pline, what are its boundaries?’, and ‘What kind of discipline is it?’ The
editor of the current volume (Karim Sadeghi) reflects this uncertainty in
his introductory chapter. I did likewise in an article I wrote in Language
Teaching in 2021. There are different positions. One is that SLA is really
vii
viii Foreword
not a discipline but just a subfield of cognitive psychology (Doughty &

Long, 2003). But this was challenged by the growing interest among
researchers in the ‘social turn’ (Block, 2003) and, later, the bi/multilin-
gual turn (May, 2013), where the emphasis is placed on the role of social
context and social identity in L2 acquisition. In the opinion of some
(myself being one), SLA is both a ‘pure’ and an ‘applied’ discipline. As a
pure discipline, it informs our understanding about the fundamental
nature of the human capacity for language. As an applied discipline, it
offers theories and research that can address social and, in particular, ped-
agogic problems. The boundaries of SLA are now clearly porous, with
very different positions adopted by different researchers. SLA is difficult
to tie down, although Karim Sadeghi makes a valiant effort to do so in his
Introduction to the book. In practice, however, its porous nature does
not seem to matter much as individual scholars simply lock into their
particular specialty and get on with their research.
An alternative approach to staking out the territory of a new discipline
is to interview key scholars in the field. This is the approach adopted in
Talking About Second Language Acquisition. It is not the first to use this
approach. De Bot (2015) used interviews and questionnaires to collect
data from 106 applied linguists and then analyzed the data to provide a
picture of how the informants became affiliated to applied linguistics and
how they defined their discipline. Sadeghi opted for a somewhat different
approach. Drawing on Kunnan’s (2015) Talking About Language
Assessment, a book that he found had greater appeal to his own PhD stu-
dents than a traditional topic-based approach, he invited a select number
of SLA scholars, each an expert in their own subfield of SLA, to partici-
pate in an interview, allocating each his/her own chapter in the book.
This approach has an advantage over edited collections and handbooks
because it ensures a common approach to each subfield of SLA. Each
interviewee was asked a set of uniform questions and also a set of ques-
tions tailored to their field. Another advantage of this approach is that it
personalizes the work of the specialists, taking the reader beyond a
straightforward exposition of theory and research into the private worlds
of scholars in action.
Foreword ix
What then of the selection of the SLA scholars? Sadeghi mentions that
he invited 20 to participate, 16 agreed (I was one that, for personal rea-
sons, did not), and 2 subsequently withdrew. Thus, the book addresses 14
areas in SLA. These cover the L2 acquisition of the key levels of lan-
guage—pronunciation (Derwing), morphosyntax (Gabriele), syntax
(O’Grady), and vocabulary (Schmitt). Two of the major subdivisions of
SLA are there—input and interaction, which is multiply represented in
interviews of Gass, Mackey, and Sato, and instructed L2 acquisition, rep-
resented in Loewen and Benati. Current issues in SLA are addressed in
the interviews about complex dynamic systems theory (de Bot), bilin-
gualism (Sorace), and L1 attrition (Schmid). The applied aspects of SLA
are also well represented in the interviews involving digital technology
(Stockwell) and writing development (Rosa Manchon). This is an impres-
sive coverage of the field. Inevitably, however, there are some gaps—there
is no expert specifically addressing pragmatics, age in L2 acquisition,
implicit versus explicit learning, the social turn, and, conspicuously, indi-
vidual differences in L2 acquisition, although questions on these issues
are posed to other interviewees. There is plenty of room, therefore, for a
second book of interviews addressing these areas.
An interesting feature of the interviews is the opportunity given to
individual scholars to provide a brief life history. Goodson and Sikes
(2001) identified a number of purposes served by life histories. They can
help us to answer big questions such as ‘Who are you?’, ‘Why has your
life taken the course it has?, and ‘What are the influences on your life?’ In
Becoming and Being an Applied Linguist, which I edited (Ellis, 2016), I
gathered together the life histories of a number of well-known SLA fig-
ures, hoping that in doing so I could provide readers with personalized
accounts of their research. Conventional publications tell us about schol-
ars’ theories and research but do not allow us to see why they chose the
issues they addressed or how their ideas evolved over time. All scholars are
shaped by their personal experience and the social contexts in which they
work, and their work evolves over time. The life histories reported in
Talking About Second Language Acquisition not only enhance the read-
ability of the book but also contextualize the 14 scholars’ work in SLA.
Curtin University, Perth, Australia Rod Ellis

x Foreword
References
Block, D. (2003). The social turn in second language acquisition. Edinburgh
University Press.
Cook, V. (1991). Second language learning and language teaching. Edward Arnold.
De Bot, K. (2015). A history of applied linguistics: From 1980 to the present.
Routledge.
Doughty, C., & Long, M. (2003). Handbook of second language acquisition.
Wiley-Blackwell.
Ellis, R. (1985). Understanding second language acquisition. Oxford
University Press.
Ellis, R. (1994). The study of second language acquisition. Oxford University Press.
Ellis, R. (Ed.) (2016). Becoming and being an applied linguist: The life histories of
some applied linguists. John Benjamins.
Gass, S., & Selinker, L. (2001). Second language acquisition; An introductory
course. Lawrence Erlbaum
Goodson, I., & Sykes, P. (2001). Life history research in educational settings:
Learning from lives. Open University Press.
Kunnan, A. (2014). Talking about language assessment: The LAQ interviews.
Routledge.
Larsen-Freeman, D., & Long, M. (1991). Introduction to second language acqui-
sition. Longman.
May, S. (2013). The multilingual turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL and bilin-
gual education. Routledge
Ortega, L. (2009). Understanding second language acquisition. Hodder Education.
Acknowledgments
The initial idea for this unique-in-approach, conversation-based volume,

which is one of a kind in the field of second language acquisition, devel-
oped out of a similar volume by Antony Kunnan, who almost a decade
ago compiled a number of already-published interviews on language test-
ing (in Language Assessment Quarterly) in the form of a book. I was long
developing the idea to do something similar in second language educa-
tion. I am very thankful, in the first place, to Cathy Scott, the
Commissioning Editor for Language and Linguistics at Palgrave
Macmillan, who found the idea and my proposal interesting and deeply
engaged with me for almost a year to develop, refine, and curate the pro-
posal further. Her persistence in moving the project forward despite sev-
eral rounds of review and with some reviewers being uncertain about
such an approach to second language acquisition was exemplary and a
source of further motivation and encouragement for me. Thank you
Cathy for being an influential part of the project: you really are a great
asset to your organization! I am also very indebted to the six anonymous
reviewers who offered constructive feedback (on the proposal and the
final manuscript) which enormously improved the content and structure
of the work. Without doubt, the volume would not have started without
the sincere and genuine collaboration and commitment of the 14 leaders
of the field who agreed to take part in interviews: thank you all for your
role in bringing this project to fruition! Although he was unable to take
xi
xii Acknowledgments
part in an interview, Rod Ellis had a great part to play by kindly writing
a Foreword. Bernadette Deelen-Mans and her production team at
Palgrave Macmillan (Kishor Kannan Ramesh, Petra Treiber, and Sujitha
Shiney) have all been great to work with. Thank you all! I hope this vol-
ume will kick-start further conversations and discussions in the field
between other inquirers into SLA and other forerunners.
May 2022 Karim Sadeghi

Contents
1 SLA at 55: What Are the Key Issues? 1
2 Input
and Interaction in SLA: An Interview with Susan
Gass 21
3 Interaction
and Feedback in SLA: An Interview with
Alison Mackey 39
4 Classroom
Interaction and SLA: An Interview with
Masatoshi Sato 55
5 Teaching
Pronunciation and SLA: An Interview with
Tracey Derwing 73
6 Vocabulary
Acquisition and Pedagogy in SLA: An
Interview with Norbert Schmitt 89
7 Morphosyntactic
Processing in SLA: An Interview with
Alison Gabriele105
xiii
xiv Contents
8 Emergentist
Syntax and SLA: An Interview with William
O’Grady123
9 Writing
Development in SLA: An Interview with Rosa
Manchón141
10 First
Language Attrition and SLA: An Interview with
Monika Schmid159
11 Bilingualism
and SLA: An Interview with Antonella
Sorace177
12 Complex
Dynamic Systems and Bi/Multilingualism in
SLA: An Interview with Kees de Bot193
13 Instructed
Second Language Acquisition: An Interview
with Shawn Loewen211
14 Processing
Instruction and SLA: An Interview with
Alessandro Benati229
15 Digital
Technology and SLA: An Interview with Glenn
Stockwell245
I ndex267
List of Photos
Photo 2.1 Susan Gass 21

Photo 3.1 Alison Mackey 39
Photo 4.1 Masatoshi Sato 55
Photo 5.1 Tracey Derwing 73
Photo 6.1 Norbert Schmitt 89
Photo 7.1 Alison Gabriele 105
Photo 8.1 William O’Grady 123
Photo 9.1 Rosa Manchón 141
Photo 10.1 Monika Schmid 159
Photo 11.1 Antonella Sorace 177
Photo 12.1 Kees de Bot 193
Photo 13.1 Shawn Loewen 211
Photo 14.1 Alessandro Benati 229
Photo 15.1 Glenn Stockwell 245
xv
1
SLA at 55: What Are the Key Issues?
Introduction
In his review of second language (L2) acquisition (SLA) research in 1994,
Ellis included over 1500 references to research in this area, and 14 years
later, in 2008, the list grew to include 2700 publications. A search for the
phrase ‘Second Language Acquisition’ in Google and Google Scholar in
October 2021 (the time of drafting this chapter) hits 11 million and 3.88
million records, respectively. These simple figures show how huge the
field has grown in only a little more than half a century of its lifespan,
although it is still at a very young age. These statistics also imply that
there has been a sharply growing interest in second language acquisition,
as Rothman (2020) notes, such that even a simple listing of publications
in the area of SLA will require several book-length volumes. On the one
hand, one is surprised at, and at the same time highly commends, the
rapid development of the field on a daily basis (with 88,900 publications
reported by Google Scholar between January 2020 and October 2021,
which means an average of about 140 publications per day, implying that
by the time this book is published, there will be 20,000–30,000 publica-
tions added to the list). And on the other hand, one gets lost amid this
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 1

K. Sadeghi, Talking About Second Language Acquisition,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99758-8_1
2 K. Sadeghi
explosion of information, which makes it very difficult, if not impossible,

to provide even a very brief and sketchy overview of the field.
As such, it is not the aim of this introductory chapter to survey the
history and developments in SLA as I believe such an overview would
require a full-length book to do justice to the field. After defining SLA,
this chapter will instead provide a very brief account of its first days when
SLA started to be recognized as a field, introduce some major themes and
key issues in the field, touch upon factors affecting second language
acquisition, reflect on some current debates in the field, and highlight
what we still do not know about SLA. The chapter will then continue
with an overview of the content of the rest of the book, introduce the
interview-based approach adopted for understanding SLA concepts, and
eventually explain the criteria for the selection of scholars who were inter-
viewed for this volume.
What Is SLA?
The three key terms constituting the title of the field (‘Second’, ‘Language’,
and ‘Acquisition’) seem to be very obvious and easy to understand at first
glance; however, these same simple terms have kept scholars arguing for
decades on distinctions between dichotomies like second and foreign as
well as learning and acquisition (Krashen, 1982, as well as interviews in
this book, for example). Those old debates have now eased off, and while
most scholars would agree that SLA deals with understanding how lan-
guages other than the mother tongue are learned (de Bot et al., 2005),
there still is no full consensus on the processes of acquisition as well as its
nature (VanPatten et al., 2020). Although the term ‘acquisition’ in SLA
entails how a language (other than first language or L1) is learned in
naturalistic and informal settings, the field has also come to embrace lan-
guage learning that takes place in formal classroom settings and in for-
eign contexts (in the form of instructed second language acquisition(ISLA))
as well as in second language contexts such as bilingual education and
immersion programs (Larsen-Freeman & Long, 2014) where, in addition
to formal education, there is also a chance to ‘pick up’ the language
through interacting with L1 speakers outside the classroom context.
Although scholars disagree on what is meant by ‘language’ as one of

the foci of SLA researchers, most would refer to language as the underly-
ing mental representation or grammar rather than its explicit realization
in terms of skills and subskills (VanPatten et al., 2020). For these research-
ers, SLA refers to studying how learners of non-native languages develop
that underlying system or what is commonly known as the ‘interlan-
guage’ (Selinker, 1972). Understanding how language is actually acquired
is no simple task as there are major questions on the what (the nature of
the knowledge at which one arrives at the end of acquisition), how (the
process of acquisition), and why (reasons behind the faster acquisition
rate by some learners) of L2 acquisition, to which final answers are not
yet known, since SLA is a highly complex phenomenon (Saville-Troike &
Barto, 2017). SLA studies, according to Klein (1986), aim to uncover the
principles at work in learning a language other than L1 either as a result
of everyday communication or through instruction. Considering SLA as
a subfield of applied linguistics (itself only 20 years older than SLA),
Larsen-Freeman (2000), while admitting that both fields grapple with
‘fundamental definitional issues’, regards SLA as a multidisciplinary field
(with both theoretical and empirical perspectives) that addresses ‘the spe-
cific issue of how people acquire a second language and the specific prob-
lem of why everyone does not do so successfully’ (p. 165).
According to McCarthy (2016), SLA as a long-established field that
aims to find out ‘how second languages are acquired, the underlying pro-
cesses, the problems, the success or failure of encounters with the target
language in natural settings or through pedagogical intervention’ (p. 7).
Spada and Lightbown (2020) similarly view the goal of SLA researchers
as focusing on ‘the developing knowledge and use of a language by chil-
dren and adults who already know at least one other language’. Unlike
scholars like Ellis (2021) and Larsen-Freeman (2000), who regard SLA as
a subfield of applied linguistics, Widdowson (2021) argues that SLA is
not a branch of applied linguistics since the latter deals with real-life
problems related to language, whereas the focus of SLA is rather theoreti-
cal, trying to understand the nature of the underlying mental representa-
tion of L2. Likewise, Gass (this volume) argues that while there are
overlaps between SLA and applied linguistics, ‘they are not in a superset/
subset relationship’. Ellis (2021) distinguishes between pure and applied
4 K. Sadeghi
SLA, maintaining that while the former ‘aims to contribute to our under-
standing of the nature of the human language faculty’, the latter addresses
‘issues of social and, in particular, pedagogical importance’ (p. 192).
Accordingly, SLA, as used here, refers to the field of inquiry that aims
to investigate the nature of L2 and how L2 learning takes place (the learn-
ing process). In so doing, SLA scholars attend to key issues like whether
L2 learning is different from or similar to L1 acquisition, what factors
affect L2 learning, what the nature of the language being learned is, what
developmental stages there are, whether explicit teaching affects L2
acquisition, and what the roles of individual factors such as aptitude and
willingness to communicate are in L2 acquisition. The definition pro-
vided by Saville-Troike and Barto (2017) is the one which I subscribe to
and find both comprehensive and easy to understand:
(SLA) refers both to the study of individuals or groups who are learning a
language subsequent to learning their first one as young children, and to
the process of learning that language. The additional language is called a
second language (L2), even though it may actually be the third, fourth or
tenth to be acquired. (p. 2)
The Rise of SLA

According to Larsen-Freeman and Long (2014), people have been inter-
ested in the teaching aspect of SLA since the remote past or ‘since antiq-
uity’ (p. 5), but the focus on the learning part of SLA dates back to the
1960s, when as a result of fundamental changes to our understanding of
the nature of learning and of language (in psychology and linguistics) ‘for
the first time in recent history’ (ibid.), the emphasis shifted from teaching
languages to studying the learning process. This shift of focus from teach-
ing to learning gave way to the field of second language acquisition.
Saville-Troike and Barto (2017), on the other hand, believe that ‘interest
in second language learning and use dates back many centuries’ (p. 25,
emphasis mine). Different scholars provide slightly different birthdates for
SLA, with the general agreement that SLA came into formal existence in
the late 1960s or early 1970s. Indeed understanding how a field came into
being and developed into its current form is important, as Ellis (2021) notes:
If we want to understand where we are now, we need to consider where we

have come from … [and] it is also important to understand how the ideas
that motivated a field of enquiry at one time evolved into and were some-
times replaced by ideas later on. (p. 190)
VanPatten et al. (2020) trace the field back to Pit Corder’s publication
in 1967 ‘The Significance of Learner’s Errors’, based on which it can be
argued that SLA is now 55 years old in 2022 (only five years older than
the author of this chapter!), although the authors acknowledge that
Selinker’s (1972) ‘Interlanguage’ could also mark the start of SLA. Larsen-
Freeman (2018) agrees that most scholars in the field would credit
Corder’s and Selinker’s landmark publications as well as cognitive revolu-
tion (in linguistics and psychology) following Chomsky’s (1965) intro-
duction of universal grammar (UG) that led to the establishment of
modern-day SLA.
In an excellent review of the history of SLA, Gass (2009) argues that
the launch date of the first journal exclusively devoted to the field (i.e.,
Language Learning that appeared in 1948) can be taken as the starting
point of SLA. She convincingly argues against M. Thomas’ (1998) claim
that despite conventional wisdom on the origin of SLA in the late 1960s
and early 1970s, the field can be traced back to as early as Augustine
(fourth century). To reject her ideas, Gass brings evidence from her past
works (Gass et al., 1998, p. 407) that a field should be defined ‘theoreti-
cally first, and historically second’, by which they refer to the separation
of ‘language learning’ from ‘language teaching’, which for them is
assumed to mark the beginning of the discipline of SLA. Although Gass
herself sets 1948 as the birthdate for SLA (making it 74 years old in
2022), she acknowledges that ‘the choice of the beginning of the field is
not straightforward’ and that ‘scholars today still consider SLA a disci-
pline that does not go back much earlier than the 1960s or 1970s, and
some would even take a later date’ (p. 4). Indeed in her earlier work
(Gass, 1993), she proposes that SLA has been with us for about 20 years,
implying its inception date to be 1972 or 1973.
Whatever the exact date is set for the emergence of SLA, it was born to
parents in psychology and linguistics following important turns in the
history of these disciplines between 1955 and 1965 (Husltijn, 2007).
6 K. Sadeghi
VanPatten et al. (2020) argue that the cognitive and generative paradigms
in psychology and linguistics (as a reaction to behaviorism and structural-
ism) led to modern L1 acquisition research agendas which in turn influ-
enced L2 acquisition research, with the driving question behind SLA
being: How similar or different is learning other languages compared to
acquiring L1? Although disciplines of linguistics and psychology have
been instrumental in the appearance of SLA, the field has grown to be
interdisciplinary in nature and has been influenced by other subfields in
applied linguistics like psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics, as well as by
allied disciplines like social psychology (Ellis, 2021; Saville-Troike &
Barto, 2017). Although compared to other scientific disciplines SLA is
very young, it has been growing so fast during recent decades that there
are now dedicated journals (like Second Language Research and Studies in
Second Language Acquisition, just to name the two top-tier ones), as well
as societies like European Second Language Acquisition (EuroSLA) and
Second Language Research Forum (SLRF) that hold regular conferences
and events. Indeed, as Cook and Singleton (2014) observe, the field that
started with a focus on a few aspects of grammar has now expanded to
encompass issues like ‘the emotional life of L2 users, their gestures and
their complex relationships with native speakers and with fellow L2
users’, among many others (p. xi).
Key Issues/Concepts in SLA

There is no fixed set of key issues or topics that are equally significant to
all scholars, and as Cook and Singleton (2014) acknowledge, there are
innumerable topics that can be discussed in SLA; however, issues or ques-
tions identified by researchers depend on how popular they believe them
to be, the relevance to their expertise, and whether they will interest their
audience. While the nature of interlanguage (or the language developed
by L2 learners), the process of acquisition (how this interlanguage is
developed), as well as factors affecting the order and rate of L2 develop-
ment have been of prime concern since the start of the field, different
researchers have identified a set of key issues to be the most intriguing,
and have discussed these in their works or attempted to offer answers to
relevant concerns and questions. In a recent volume, for example,

VanPatten et al. (2020) identify eight questions that they believe are key
questions in SLA that ‘drive the bulk of L2 research (and theorizing)’ (p.
xii) and devote a chapter to tackle each. They raise the following key
questions: (1) What are the origins of SLA as a research field? (2) What
does development look like? (3) What are the roles of input and output?
(4) What is the initial state? (5) Can L2 learners become native-like? (6)
Does instruction make a difference? (7) What are the roles of explicit and
implicit learning? and (8) What are individual differences and how do
they affect acquisition? (for a review of the book, see Sadeghi, 2021).
Earlier in 2014, Cook and Singleton recognized the following as key
topics in SLA: (1) How do different languages connect in our mind? (2)
Is there a best age for learning a second language? (3) How do people
acquire the words of a second language? (4) How important is grammar
in acquiring and using a second language? (5) How do people learn to
write in a second language? (6) How do attitude and motivation help in
learning a second language? (7) How useful is second language acquisi-
tion research for teachers? and (8) What are the goals of language teach-
ing? De Bot et al. (2005) discuss distinctions between pairs of terms
which they believe are important in understanding SLA, highlighting
that although these concepts are presented as dichotomies, they indeed
represent a continuum: monolingualism versus bilingualism versus mul-
tilingualism; first versus second versus third versus foreign language;
acquisition versus learning; input versus intake; instructed versus nonin-
structed SLA; implicit versus explicit learning; and incidental versus
intentional learning (for similarities and differences between these two
final pairs of dichotomies, see Husltijn, 2005, 2013).
Larsen-Freeman (2018) lists the following as issues that have been
given due attention in SLA: applications of UG to SLA, form-focused
instruction, task-based language teaching, input processing, output pro-
duction, noticing, and the interface between explicit and implicit knowl-
edge. Comparing undergraduate and graduate textbooks written on SLA
in the previous 15 years (like Ellis, 1994; Doughty & Long, 2003; Gass
& Selinker 2001, among others), Husltijn (2007) identifies the following
main ‘strands’ in SLA literature: the representation of linguistic informa-
tion, the processing of input, interaction among L2 learners (with other
8 K. Sadeghi
L2 learners or native speakers), learner attributes, and social context. He

also sees the following as the most important issues or ‘puzzling phenom-
ena’ that require further attention in SLA research (pp. 193–196): the
poverty of the stimulus problem, the age question, differences in learning
outcomes, learning mechanisms, differences between L1 and L2 acquisi-
tion, language proficiency questions, external factors (like quality and
quantity of input), and stages of development. A compressive account of
Key Concepts in Second Language Acquisition (in a volume with the same
title) has been offered by Loewen and Reinders (2011) where the authors
provide an encyclopedic description of tens of entries (from academic
English to backsliding to bilingualism to CALL and so on) in the boarder
field of applied linguistics, including SLA.
In a very authoritative and compelling account of the history of SLA,
as an answer to the question ‘What aspects of L2 acquisition has SLA
addressed?’, Ellis (2021) divides the SLA history into five phases, identi-
fying the major lines of research in each phase, listing key studies and key
findings pertaining to those phases as well as the major theoretical influ-
ences. Here is a very brief synopsis of the phases and research areas/issues
that were in vogue during the identified periods:
Phase 1 (1960s and 1970s)—Making a Start. Research areas: order and

sequence of acquisition
Phase 2 (1980s)—The Expansion Period. Research areas: language trans-
fer; linguistic universals and universal grammar; second language prag-
matics; input and interaction
Phase 3 (late 1980s onward)—The Cognitive Phase. Research areas: con-
sciousness and L2 acquisition; implicit and explicit knowledge; emer-
gentism; skill learning theory
Phase 4 (late 1990s onward)—The Social Turn. Research area: socio-
cultural SLA
Phase 5 (2000s onward)—Recent Developments. Research areas: Complex
Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST); the multilingual turn
A comparison of the above volumes suggests that SLA experts may

have slightly different views on what the most significant concepts, issues,
and questions are in SLA; however, most would agree that the nature of
L2, the way input is processed, the way L2 is developed, L1–L2 differ-
ences in acquisition, the role of individual differences in L2 acquisition,
the effect of explicit teaching on L2 learning, and the role of linguistic,
cognitive, and social factors in shaping L2 development are but some of
the most pressing issues whose contribution to L2 acquisition requires
further attention. The link between L1 and L2 is another key topic in
SLA research, and as Saville-Troike and Barto (2017) recognize, despite
their similarities, L1 and L2 acquisition follow different processes. They
also find it somewhat surprising that most research has been conducted
in the area of monolingualism (and L1 acquisition) rather than multilin-
gualism (or L2 acquisition) ‘given the size and widespread distribution of
multilingual populations’ (p. 8). For example, while there are 427 million
speakers of English as L1, the number of L2 speakers of English amounts
to 950 million—according to Beare (2020), the British Council estimates
the number of English learners worldwide to be more than 1.5 billion.
Also, almost all of the approximately 6000 languages of the world have
been learned as an L2 ‘by some portion of their speakers’ (Saville-Troike
& Barto, 2017, p. 9). Similarly, Cook and Singleton (2014), drawing on
statistics that more than 43% of residents in Toronto speak a first lan-
guage other than formal languages of Canada (English and French),
hypothesize that ‘probably across the globe L2 users outnumber those
who speak only one language’ (p. xii).
Indeed, despite the prominence of multilingualism and the multilin-
gual turn in education (May 2013) and whether we like or not, L2 acqui-
sition theory has been based on, and followed in the footsteps of, L1
acquisition research when the latter field experienced a revolution in the
1950s and 1960s (VanPatten et al., 2020). Accordingly, any issue related
to L1 acquisition will be of potential interest for L2 acquisition research-
ers (such as whether the common belief in L1 acquisition, i.e., that the
younger the better, also applies to L2). Furthermore, SLA will be con-
cerned with further concepts like motivation and instruction that are
irrelevant in the context of first language acquisition. Below, I look at the
standing of some of these variables in SLA research.
10 K. Sadeghi
Factors Affecting SLA

Approaching SLA from a Dynamic Systems Theory (DST) perspective,
de Bot et al. (2005) concentrate on variations in language learning and
believe that a learner’s knowledge of L1, L2, or Ln is always developing
and is never stable. They attribute the changing nature of L2 develop-
ment to factors like the type and amount of contact with the language as
well as individual characteristics such as age, intelligence, and prior learn-
ing experience, which all work in an interactive way rather than indepen-
dently from one another. As almost all interviewees in this volume would
agree, de Bot et al. (2005) continue to argue that it is impossible to pre-
dict how these and other factors can affect a learner’s language acquisition
for four primary reasons: there is no way to understand the exact number
of factors affecting language learning; there is no way to know the exact
extent to which each factor can influence language development; these
factors work in interaction with others, with the nature of interactions far
from being clear; and a learner’s language knowledge is never stable,
changing from one day to another. Despite the impossibility of providing
a precise picture of the nature of variables affecting L2 acquisition, SLA
researchers have consensus on a range of factors that affect the rate or
speed of L2 acquisition, although little agreement exists as to whether
these factors can also affect the stages of acquisition, which are generally
believed to be internally wired for all learners, as is the case in L1 acquisi-
tion. Below, I touch on some of the major factors highlighted by experts
in the field as being significant in affecting the course of L2 development.
Indeed, as interviewees in this volume highlight, ranking these factors
may not be appropriate simply because there are numerous intricate rela-
tionships between different factors, as well as a multitude of idiosyncratic
learning-, context-, and learner-related considerations.
Generally speaking, it can be said that there are two broad groups of
factors that influence L2 acquisition: intrinsic versus extrinsic. Intrinsic
variables are those stemming from the learner himself/herself, the first
one being one’s mental abilities or cognitive system. Without this base, all
efforts to teach and learn a second language will be futile, and research
(e.g., Husltijn, 2005) suggests that healthy individuals (in terms of
mental ability) will be able to learn a second language (although with dif-
ferential degrees of success or levels of attainment) if they find themselves
in the right context. Factors internal to the learner also include their
intelligence levels, aptitude (Skehan, 2012), working memory capacity
(Williams, 2012), brain maturation and brain adaptation processes (criti-
cal period), and access to universal grammar (Husltijn, 2005). External
factors primarily refer to the environment around the learner and more
specifically to the quantity and quality of input, interaction with others,
and a host of social variables such as socioeconomic status, societal/cultural
attitudes toward the L2, the learning context (foreign as opposed to sec-
ond), family support, availability of instruction as well as its quality, and
access to learning resources such as traditional materials and digital tech-
nological devices (Chapelle, 2013, 2019). There are also individual differ-
ences like motivation (Ushioda & Dornyei, 2012), stress and anxiety
(McCarthy, 2016), psychosocial integration with L2 culture (Birdsong,
2006), and attitude (Cook & Singleton, 2014), as well as age (Birdsong,
2005, 2006; DeKeyser, 2012), identity and agency (Duff, 2012), L1 lit-
eracy (Bigelow & Watson, 2012), prior L2 learning experience, learning
styles and strategies (Birdsong, 2006), and learner’s social and cultural
context (McCarthy, 2016). Although some of these, such as identity, are
constructed as a result of integration with the society and environment
and that is why they may also be considered as factors external to the
learner, others such as motivation may work both internally and externally.
In a similar classification, de Bot et al. (2005) categorize factors affect-
ing L2 development into three: the relationship between L1 and L2; the
learning setting as well as the amount and type of input; and learner
characteristics like aptitude and attitude. To progress from initial state to
learner language (interlanguage) to final state, Saville-Troike and Barto
(2017, p. 17) believe the following factors to be influential: innate capac-
ity, L1 knowledge, world knowledge, interaction skills, basic processes
(transfer), necessary conditions (input), and facilitating conditions (feed-
back, aptitude, motivation, instruction, and so on). In the context of
instructed second language acquisition (Loewen & Sato, 2017), a range
of factors from input flooding to input processing to feedback and so on
(Loewen, 2012; VanPatten, 2012) have been proposed to affect the ease
12 K. Sadeghi
with which a second language is learned, at least as far as language skills

(rather than their internal mental representation) are concerned. Spada
and Lightbown (2020) note that as far as the rate of learning and ulti-
mate attainment (more accurate use of language) is concerned, research
has shown instruction to be significantly effective in L2 acquisition.
Ortega’s (2010) six-volume anthology with its 82 already-published
chapters by some of the pioneers is by far the most comprehensive treat-
ment of the field with a full coverage of the history of SLA and its theo-
retical and methodological foundations as well as major themes and
factors (including the role of UG, cognition, and social factors) affecting
L2 acquisition in naturalistic and instructed contexts. Whatever classifi-
cation or number of factors are listed as factors affecting SLA, all scholars
would agree that, apart from the internal mechanism which is outside
our reach and which cannot be mediated for a more facilitated acquisi-
tion to take place, it is the input that plays (in combination with other
factors) the most influential part in the success of second language acqui-
sition, in that without input, L2 acquisition cannot even start. Input is a
variable on which we (as language teachers or SLA researchers) can exer-
cise some control to shape the course and speed of L2 acquisition. Below,
I provide more information on the nature of input and how it affects L2
acquisition before presenting the content of the book.
Input, defined as language (verbal or nonverbal; oral, visual, or writ-
ten) a learner is exposed to, has been regarded as a necessary condition for
both L1 and L2 acquisition and is of both theoretical and practical
importance. While in L1 acquisition input itself is not enough for lan-
guage learning to materialize and there is a need for interaction between
the child and other human beings in his/her environment (parents, care-
takers, siblings) to trigger language acquisition device to start function-
ing, in L2 acquisition the role of interaction and output is less significant,
although scholars may have conflicting views on whether interaction and
output are needed at all for the development of mental representation of
L2 knowledge (e.g., Schmitt in this volume argues that exposure only
works if there is engagement with the input; otherwise, simple exposure
does not lead to acquisition). Those who see a place for interaction and
output primarily highlight the noticing which arises as a result of these
latter activities as well as the opportunities for additional input they
provide (Mackey, this volume). Gass (this volume), however, believes that
while input is the ‘sine qua non of acquisition’, it cannot be ranked as
being more important than interaction or output. According to Krashen’s
(1982) input hypothesis, which aims to answer ‘perhaps the most impor-
tant question in our field’ (p. 20):
a necessary (but not sufficient) condition to move from stage i [current

competence] to stage i + 1 [the next level] is that the acquirer understand
input that contains i + 1, where ‘understand’ means that the acquirer is
focused on the meaning and not the form of the message. (p. 21)
In other words, not all that is input is intaken; the input that is com-
prehensible is uptaken, which is what is needed for acquisition to take
place. Indeed, Krashen (1982) argues that instruction would contribute
to ‘learning’ rather than ‘acquisition’ and that for learners to be able to
move smoothly through developmental stages, enough exposure to natu-
ral language and comprehensible input are sufficient. Later research has
indicated that apart from the quantity of input, its quality is also a deter-
mining factor, in addition to output, which is equally important (Mackey,
this volume). Research also suggests that the quality and quantity of
‘classroom-based’ input may not be sufficient for proper L2 acquisition
and that chances should be provided for more natural and communica-
tive language (e.g., Lyster, 1994).
Talking about Second Language Acquisition

The idea for an interview-based book on second language acquisition
came from a similar approach to language assessment: Kunnan’s (2015)
Talking About Language Assessment, which is a collection of interviews
(already published in Language Assessment Quarterly) with leading schol-
ars on seminal issues in language assessment. I have used parts of this
book in my PhD language assessment courses and found the material to
be more engaging than the treatments of similar issues in traditional
paper or chapter formats. The conversation-like presentation of the new
material allows the reader to envisage him/herself in a real-time dialogue
14 K. Sadeghi
with the author, and rather than waiting for the paper’s author to impose
on him what he thinks is relevant or important, the reader is engaged in
a conversation which he/she leads, expecting the author to answer ques-
tions important for him/her. It was based on such a logic that I proposed
to Palgrave doing a similar book on second language acquisition; and I
am pleased that not only the publisher but also the contributors wel-
comed the idea, making this volume the first of its kind in its question-
and-answer approach to key issues in SLA, hence the title Talking About
Second Language Acquisition.
The interviewees whose views on various aspects of SLA appear in this
book are some of most well-known and active researchers in the field who
have already published extensively in their expertise areas and some of
whom are leaders and pioneers in applied linguistics and/or second lan-
guage acquisition. Out of 20 scholars invited for interview, 16 agreed to
contribute, 2 of whom withdrew at a later stage for personal reasons. In
addition to this introductory chapter, and a Foreword by Rod Ellis, the
volume contains 14 interviews on some of the pressing issues in SLA with
the following experts in the order that their interviews appear: Susan
Gass (on input and interaction in SLA), Alison Mackey (on interaction
and feedback in SLA), Masatoshi Sato (on classroom interaction and
SLA), Tracey Derwing (on teaching pronunciation and SLA), Norbert
Schmitt (on vocabulary acquisition and pedagogy in SLA), Alison
Gabriele (on morphosyntactic processing in SLA), William O’Grady (on
emergentist syntax and SLA), Rosa Manchón (on writing development
in SLA), Monika Schmid (on first language attrition and SLA), Antonella
Sorace (on bilingualism and SLA), Kees de Bot (on complex dynamic
systems and bi/multilingualism in SLA), Shawn Loewen (on instructed
second language acquisition), Alessandro Benati (on processing instruc-
tion and SLA), and Glenn Stockwell (on digital technology and SLA).
While there are certain areas of SLA such as pragmatics and the role of
implicit/explicit knowledge that are not covered here and could be cov-
ered in another similar volume in the future, the number of topics had to
be limited, and the choice of the topics was obviously dependent on the
expertise areas of the interviewees.
Each interview is organized into three sections: (I) the interviewee’s life
story; (II) the interviewee’s contributions to the field; and (III) current
and future trends in SLA. In the first section, all interviewees were asked
two questions: one on a panoramic view of their academic life and the
other on their significant academic achievements such as prizes. In
Section II, the interviewees were asked ten questions (some with follow-
up subquestions) about their contributions to SLA; indeed, different
questions were posed to different interviewees in this section since they
were requested to talk about interviewee-specific publications and proj-
ects. Section III (ten questions) was more or less the same for all inter-
viewees where they were asked to talk about the meaning of SLA, key
factors affecting SLA, the role of individual differences and L2 acquisi-
tion, ISLA, language teaching and learning at the time of the
COVID-19 pandemic, as well as current hot topics and future research
directions among others. In Sections II and III, the interviewees were also
given the chance to ask themselves a question on issues that they believed
I should have asked them but did not. Given space considerations, inter-
viewee expertise, and personal reservations, some scholars understand-
ably preferred not to answer certain questions (or parts of a question) or
answered these more implicitly, particularly in Section III. While some
interviews were very extensive and included informative materials, for
space issues I had to shorten them as I aimed to produce independent
chapter-length readings with an average length of 6000–7000 words. The
interviews can accordingly be considered self-contained chapters with
references and reflection questions each.
Conclusion
Whether the field is 55 years old (setting Corder’s publication as the
demarcation), or 74 (according to Gass, 2009), or much older (as Thomas,
1998, would claim) or even younger (based on Gass, 1993), or whether
SLA can be considered a discipline at all (with Ellis, 2021, recognizing it
as a new or early-stage discipline, parasitic on others), the truth of the
matter is that ‘we know little about [SLA]’ (Cook & Singleton, 2014, p.
xi). Indeed, there is much more to be known about the true nature of the
abstract phenomenon of second language acquisition, a process which is
far from being simple to understand despite happening almost
16 K. Sadeghi
automatically and effortlessly in naturalistic contexts. One plausible

interpretation is that it is just the case that making sense of some phe-
nomena may be outside the reach of the mental abilities of human beings:
‘You have been given of knowledge nothing except a little’ (The Koran,
17: Al-Isra, 85). In Chomskyan terms, this may simply mean that our
minds are wired to understand certain issues to a certain degree; or in
Kerlinger’s (1979, p. 7) words, ‘our understanding of a phenomenon is
always incomplete, partial, and probabilistic’. This does not mean, how-
ever, that we already know what we ‘have been given the capacity’ to
know about the nature of L2 acquisition, but that we should continue
our search and studies until that threshold is reached. It is my sincere
hope that the fine blend of interviews in this collection will advance our
understanding of current issues in SLA and will open avenues to further
investigate the remaining questions.
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2
Input and Interaction in SLA:
An Interview with Susan Gass
Photo 2.1 Susan Gass
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 21

K. Sadeghi, Talking About Second Language Acquisition,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99758-8_2
22 K. Sadeghi
Section I: Your Life Story

Thank you so much Prof. Gass for kindly agreeing to do this interview on
second language acquisition (SLA). As an entry question, I would like you to
briefly introduce yourself, providing us with a panoramic view of your life as
well as highlighting your most important achievements (academic and non-
academic). Please tell us a short story of your life (both personal and profes-
sional) from childhood to the present moment, highlighting turning points.
I begin this story by saying that I was born into a bilingual home. It
was during the war, and my father was a physician in the Navy and my
mother was living with my Yiddish-speaking grandparents. Once the war
was over, my family moved to New York City so that my father could
finish his medical training. This meant losing touch with the daily con-
tact of a language other than English. As someone who is interested in
languages, I now see this as a lost opportunity. However, what early expo-
sure did give me was an interest in other languages/cultures, most likely
the impetus for my long-lasting interest in language. My mother was a
psychologist and had an interest in the lives of others. I think this was
what that made me interested in and appreciate differences in the beliefs
of others and the way others lived. My first serious foreign-language
instructional experience came when I was 13 and began studying French
and Latin. The French experience was memorable not because of the
language instruction, but because of the passion that my instructor had
for France and the French people. My years studying French awakened in
me my long-standing interest in other cultures and other languages. But,
perhaps, the real turning point occurred when I was still in high school
and had the opportunity to spend a summer in Rome, Italy, living with
an Italian family. Each day was a new adventure, studying art, history,
and literature. The family I lived with knew some of the major Italian
leftist authors, and we went to their studios, giving me a broader look
into a world that was new and exciting for me.
The family that I lived with invited me to spend a year with them after
high school, and my parents were forward-looking enough to allow this.
I enrolled in an American school in Rome where I studied Italian as well
as other high school subjects. The grandparents in the family I lived with
spoke no English so I was forced to speak only Italian. By the end of the
2 Input and Interaction in SLA: An Interview with Susan Gass 23
year, my Italian was very good and I returned to the US, where I decided
to major in Italian. Unfortunately, in most US universities, the emphasis
in language departments was on literature and not language. This was
true of the university I attended (University of California, Berkeley) and
the university where I received my MA (Middlebury College). However,
when I was at Berkeley, I discovered that there was something called ‘lin-
guistics’, and I enrolled in an introductory course. It was at this point that
I was able to marry my interests in Italian with the study of language
rather than literature.
You have several significant national and international achievements,
awards, recognitions, and honorary memberships. Could you tell us which
one has been the most outstanding? One of your important recognitions was
the Kenneth W. Mildenberger Prize in 2014 for The Routledge Handbook
of Second Language Acquisition (with Alison Mackey). Could you briefly
talk about the nature of this award and the selection criteria?
I am grateful for the awards I have been given within my university,
nationally, and internationally. The Mildenberger award is given for an
‘outstanding scholarly book’ in the area of language, culture, literacy, or
literature where there is relevance for teaching languages other than
English. This award is special for me because I believe that we need to
focus research broadly and go beyond immediate relevance for English.
Language learning and language teaching are not language-specific.
Section II: Your Contributions to SLA

Could you tell us how and why you got involved in SLA in the first place?
As I mentioned earlier, I had always been interested in the structure of
language. Although I love to read, my main interest when studying lan-
guage (e.g., French, Italian) was how the grammar worked in those lan-
guages. I enrolled in a PhD program in Linguistics at UCLA, but after
three years, for family reasons, I went to Indiana University, where I ‘dis-
covered’ courses in Applied Linguistics. This was 1975, and there were no
courses in second language acquisition. I enrolled in a course in language
testing and was ‘hooked’ on issues of measurement. I also took a seminar
with Albert Valdman that focused on issues of sociolinguistics. During
24 K. Sadeghi
that seminar, I began to think about language learning and my ideas

began to crystalize. At UCLA, I had conducted research on speech per-
ception and production, and because of my background in linguistics, I
began to think about issues of grammar. While at UCLA, I had become
familiar with the work of Keenan and Comrie and had published a paper
on relative clauses in Bikol (a language of the Philippines). This led me to
think about second language relative clause acquisition and how this
might relate to language universals and how one’s native language might
also play a role. This was at a time when anything related to language
transfer was being questioned. This topic turned into my dissertation
and, following completion of my degree in 1979, an article in Language
Learning.
What has been your main research focus in SLA so far and why did you
adopt this focus?
My first post-PhD position was at the English Language Institute at the
University of Michigan. At that time, I was still interested in issues of
grammar acquisition, but I also began thinking of methodology because of
my dissertation research, where I had found that results differed depend-
ing on the elicitation task. About a year after I began my appointment
there, Evangeline (Litsa) Varonis was hired, and we began a long collabora-
tion. Litsa’s background was in sociolinguistics; she came from the
University of Pennsylvania, where she had worked with Bill Labov. We
became interested in comprehensibility and considered ways in which L2
speakers were not comprehensible depending on pronunciation or gram-
matical accuracy. We also looked at the role of the ‘understander’, recog-
nizing that whether or not someone was able to understand L2 speech
depended, inter alia, on how familiar that person was with L2 speech, in
general, and in particular with the speech of those from a particular lan-
guage background. All of these areas have guided my research over the
years. My work with Varonis continued for more than a decade and formed
the basis of our work on the way conversations with non-native speakers
(particularly those with limited L2 language abilities) are structured.
You have an amazing number (nearly 40) of authored and edited books on
various aspects of SLA, the most recent one (2021, with Jennifer Behney)
being Elements: Interaction. Could you briefly talk about the place of inter-
action in SLA?
As mentioned above, much of my work has focused on interaction.

The idea behind this research area is that language learning takes place, in
part, through interaction, or more simply put, through conversation.
Conversation is not seen as a way of practicing what is known, but is a
forum for actual learning. There are a few important constructs: (correc-
tive) feedback occurs when an infelicitous form/utterance is produced
followed by a response to that original production. When a learner pro-
duces an erroneous form, it is often that some form of feedback is pro-
vided. Learners may or may not recognize the feedback, and if they do
recognize it as some form of correction, they may or may not modify
their linguistic knowledge. Another important concept is output, that is,
the language that learners produce. Learners often use this as a way of
testing a hypothesis about their linguistic knowledge.
Your classic Understanding Second Language Acquisition: An
Introductory Course, originally published in 1994, has seen its fifth edition
in 2020. Could you please talk about the key SLA terms and debates back
then and whether these have changed after nearly three decades? What
updated discussions/concepts appear in the latest edition?
The field has grown tremendously since the first edition of this book
more than 25 years ago. At the time of the original publication, most
scholars were interested in linguistic or psycholinguistic constructs. There
was great interest in transfer and universals. With regard to the latter, the
main research questions involved the extent to which a theory of lan-
guage is relevant to an understanding of the structure of a learner’s inter-
language. In other words, do linguistic theories incorporate second
languages? There was also interest in individual differences, but that was
not a very developed area. Over the years, we have seen less emphasis on
purely linguistic phenomena and an increased focus on psycholinguistics,
sociocultural theory, and individual differences. With regard to the latter,
we see expanded theories of motivation, but other areas, such as anxiety,
emotion, willingness-to-communicate, and grit, to name a few, have
become prominent. Finally, issues of methodology have become front
and center, with some journals having sections devoted solely to innova-
tive methodologies and critical discussions of current and past
methodologies.
26 K. Sadeghi
A similar book of yours, Input, Interaction, and the Second Language

Learner (originally published in 1997), appeared in a revised edition after
two decades (in 2018) with a change in publisher. Are debates surrounding
input and interaction and their link with SLA any different now than they
were some 25 years ago?
Behaviorist research focused on input to the learner for this formed the
basis of language learning. Second language learners were seen to mimic
the input provided to them, often through the lens of their native lan-
guage. As behaviorist theories faded, research moved to a study of inter-
nal mechanisms involved in language learning. Earlier research had
focused on the ways in which native speakers modify their speech to
second language learners, but it soon became apparent that understand-
ing modifications was interesting, but didn’t really help our understand-
ing of what learners did with modified input; mere descriptions of input
were no longer relevant. Input, however, has always been considered
important, but not as the sole driving force behind learning. The early
work in the area of input and interaction was descriptive in nature. It
went beyond describing input to describing interactions. Research (mine
and that of others, for example, Michael Long and Teresa Pica) described
conversations involving second language learners and noted differences
between these conversations and those involving fluent speakers. One of
the most important constructs was that of negotiation of meaning
whereby learners, perhaps because of an initial lack of understanding,
negotiate with an interlocutor the meaning of what is being said. It is
through these (at times lengthy) exchanges that learners receive impor-
tant feedback on the correctness of their language. This led to a descrip-
tive model that Litsa Varonis and I proposed (1985). But, descriptions
can only go so far. The emphasis then shifted to an understanding of why
interactions were important for learning. Attention and noticing became
central constructs. Feedback to a learner draws attention to a difference
between what a learner has produced and the response of a more profi-
cient speaker, thereby providing an opportunity for learners to notice a
gap between their utterance and their interlocutor’s response. Ideally,
modification by the learner is a result. Further questions in today’s
research climate involve individual differences. Why do some learners
perceive feedback as relevant and others not? Here, issues such as literacy,
age, inhibitory control, and working memory come into play.
A final construct to consider here is modified output. Output is the
language that a learner produces. Consistent with the emphasis on inter-
nal mechanisms, output takes on a significant role. Input involves com-
prehension and can often go beyond one’s knowledge because we can
often understand something even when not understanding all the words;
we can bring in additional information as part of comprehension (e.g.,
pragmatics, real-world knowledge). But when we produce language, we
have to make a decision about the order of words as well as the precise
words to use. One can think about comprehension as involving seman-
tics; production involves not only semantics but also syntax. Output is a
way of obtaining feedback on one’s language, and, therefore, can also be
a way to test hypotheses. Finally, by using language over and over, greater
automaticity may result.
One major line of your SLA work and some of your books have concen-
trated on research methodology in SLA (as in Spinner & Gass, 2019; Gass &
Mackey, 2017; Mackey and Gass, 2016). What are some of the major meth-
odological issues in SLA research?
With regard to research, there has been an explosion of treatises on
methodology over the years. These have included numerous books on the
topic, and an emphasis on Open Science and on making research tools
available (see, for example, the IRIS database (iris-database.org), a reposi-
tory of instruments and materials used in published SLA studies).
Another emphasis in today’s research is on the tools of analysis and
sophistication of statistical methods. Journals such as SSLA (Research
Methods Forum) and Language Learning (Methods Showcase) have sec-
tions devoted to research methodology. For Language Learning, Methods
Showcase articles ‘introduce new or emerging qualitative and quantita-
tive methods, techniques, or instrumentation for language data collec-
tion, cleaning, sampling, coding, scoring, and analysis’. SSLA’s emphasis
is similar: these articles ‘seek to advance methodological understanding,
training, and practices in the field. Submissions can be conceptual or
empirical; we also encourage articles introducing novel techniques’. For a
discussion in greater depth, see Gass et al. (2021).
28 K. Sadeghi
You are also the editor of one of the most prestigious SLA journals: Studies
in Second Language Acquisition (SSLA). From the perspective of the editor
of a flagship journal for about 25 years, has there been a historical develop-
ment in the type of studies published and what have been the major reasons
for rejection?
The second question relates to the history of SSLA. First, I want to
acknowledge the incredible leadership of Albert Valdman, who founded
the journal more than 40 years ago. From my perspective, the history of
the journal is in a sense the history of the field. Major journals have the
responsibility to provide leadership to the field. Decisions on whether to
publish or not publish a particular article go beyond the quality of the
article itself. There are many excellent studies that do not get published
because they are not seen to have a major impact on the development of
the field. An article that is accepted must present information that has
theoretical significance. Thus, a reason for rejection might be a lack of
theoretical underpinning. It is always interesting to receive articles that
have languages (either L1 or L2) that are understudied, but there has to
be a reason why this is theoretically interesting.
Your earliest work (with Larry Selinker in 1983) and a few other early
works concentrated on transfer in language learning as well as discourse, lin-
guistic, and psycholinguistic issues in SLA. What were some of the hot topics
back then and how has the field moved away from those early conceptions?
Much of the work on transfer in the earlier days (late 1970s, 1980s)
was a reaction to work that had attempted to minimize the role of lan-
guage transfer. Minimization was a reaction to the behaviorist position in
which transfer was the basis for learning. So, my own work was a reaction
to a reaction. Thus, ‘back then’ scholars accepted the importance of trans-
fer, and were trying to understand when transfer took place and when it
did not and what the constraints and/or triggers of transfer were. Today
transfer is taken as a given and is less a focus of investigation, but can be
an explanation for why something might or might not happen.
Back in 2004, you wrote an article for Korean Journal of Applied
Linguistics: ‘SLA: Where are we and where we are going?’ If you were going
to write the same article today, what different themes would you highlight
about the current status and the future of SLA?
My response to this question comes in large part from my experience

as SSLA editor and the articles that are submitted. There are three areas of
submissions that we are seeing. One is on vocabulary research, one on
individual differences, and the third is on psycholinguistic and neurolin-
guistic processing. In this latter area, we are seeing an emphasis on differ-
ent elicitation tools, such as eye-tracking or brain-imaging tools, such as
fMRIs or event-related brain potentials (ERPs).
Finally, I would emphasize the need for Open Science, in particular, a
need to make data and materials widely accessible. Many journals now
include ‘badges’ to articles that have made data and/or materials avail-
able. There are many venues where one can deposit data, but the most
common one for SLA data is the IRIS database discussed above.
What do you think is your most significant contribution to the field of
SLA? Of the works you have published, which one do you think has been the
most influential in this regard? What do you wish you could have done more
research on or written more about, if you had had more time and the chance
to do so?
I have enjoyed all aspects of my research in SLA. I looked at my Google
Scholars citations, and it appears that my books have been the most cited.
In particular, my SLA text (Second Language Acquisition: An Introductory
Course) appears to be the most cited, followed by other books (one on
research methodology with Alison Mackey and my book on input and
interaction, discussed above). Of my articles, the one that appears to have
had the greatest impact is the one with Litsa Varonis (1985). Other arti-
cles are on interaction (one with Litsa Varonis (1994), in which we dem-
onstrated a link between interaction and learning, and another with
Alison Mackey and Kim McDonough (2000), in which we showed
through stimulated recall the importance of the perception of feedback.
Perhaps my ‘favorite’ article in the sense that I enjoyed writing it the most
is my 1988 article in which I laid out a framework for understanding SLA.
The research area that I wish I had had time to pursue was my linguistic-
based work. Unfortunately, I was not in an environment where I could
keep up with research in that area.
Please ask yourself (and answer) one question that you wish I had asked
you about your works/contributions, achievements, appointments, and so on
but I didn’t.
30 K. Sadeghi
There are two related areas that I will comment on here. A question
that drives much research (particularly that with a linguistic focus) is
based on the assumption that SLA is part of linguistics and the goal of
SLA research is to further understand the nature of human language.
What are the constraints? In other words, can learners construct a lan-
guage that does not fall within the domain of other ‘human’ languages?
For me, this is where I started my own studies. I had been enrolled in a
PhD program in linguistics when family circumstances moved me to
another university and pushed me in a different direction. I firmly
believed that one could use SLA data to test linguistic universals (see Gass
& Schachter, 1989). If a particular universal was proposed and was tested
against data from the so-called natural languages, I believed that SLA
data would also be relevant to test that universal. The second area follows
from the first. If the goal of SLA research was to better understand the
nature of language, then the issue of its relevance to the classroom
becomes moot. This is not to say that there isn’t relevance (for I believe
there can be); it is to say that there are researchers who do not feel that
there is necessarily a direct relevance of their own research. They are
answering one question (what is language?) and not another (how does
SLA translate into classroom relevance?).
Section III: Current and Future Trends in SLA

In the rest of the interview, I will focus on current issues and debates in
SLA. To begin with, how do you define ‘second language acquisition’; how
significant are the terms ‘second’ and ‘acquisition’ as key words used to tag
the field?
In a sense, it is a pity that the field adopted the name second language
acquisition. The terms are useful as a way of designating the field of
inquiry, but each term has had its problems. To begin with, ‘second’ is a
cover term that covers all language learning after a first language has been
learned. In other words, it refers to ‘non-primary acquisition’, whether it
is in a foreign or a second language environment. But even this is ques-
tionable because when does ‘non-primary acquisition’ end and when does
‘bilingualism’ begin? Acquisition has also had its controversies. Krashen
proposed a differentiation between acquisition and learning, where the

latter referred to a conscious process and the former to a subconscious
process, similar to the process children use in developing their first lan-
guage. Over the years, as the theoretical distinction proposed by Krashen
turned out not to be useful, scholars began to conflate these terms and
use them either interchangeably or use one or the other. As an interim
stage, one would sometimes see ‘apologies’ with scholars adding a foot-
note to their writing stating that they were using these terms interchange-
ably. Despite this lack of precision of the terminology, the field has
maintained its name of SLA.
What is for you the single most important factor affecting the acquisition
of a second language? What are some of the other less important factors and
why do you think the factor you named as the answer to the first part of the
question is of paramount importance?
I do believe that there is some sort of preprogramming in language
learning in that universal constraints on language that are present for first
language are also relevant for second language learning. A second belief
of mine is that other languages known (i.e., the first language or subse-
quent languages learned) influence a second language learner’s knowl-
edge. A third belief is that the processing mechanisms involved in
language learning and use are similar across languages. But most impor-
tant for me is language use. As I explained above, the interactions and
corrective feedback one receives in those interactions and the language
produced (output) are crucial to the development of second language
knowledge. All of this must be interpreted against the backdrop of indi-
vidual differences in language learning (i.e., motivation, grit, aptitude,
attitude).
What role do you think individual attributes like age, motivation, and
aptitude, among others, play in acquiring an L2? Which one do you think has
the highest contribution and why?
Age is a long-standing area of investigation in second language research
and is still a ripe research topic. We know that language learning at an
early age often results in greater proficiency than postpubescent learning,
but this is not enough and should not be taken too seriously. In fact, I
recall a lecture that Mike Long gave in which he was discussing age six as
a cutoff point for language learning. After the lecture, a woman who was
32 K. Sadeghi
about to move to China to teach English with her five-year-old son asked
a question. Her son was about to turn six and her move was to take place
three to four months later; she wanted to know if she should go to China
earlier so that her son would have a better chance of learning Chinese.
There has been much research on many independent variables (see the
excellent handbook on this topic by Li et al. (2022)). I don’t think that
research is far enough to ‘rank’ individual attributes; rather, one would
want to see how these interact.
How do you compare the role of input, interaction, feedback, and output
in second language acquisition? Which one do you think contributes more to
L2 acquisition and why?
As I have indicated in my response above, I don’t think we can ‘rank’
these constructions. In a sense, they are a package and must be seen
together. Obviously, input is the sine qua non of acquisition. One cannot
learn language in a vacuum. Input can come in a variety of forms, that is,
from oral language input, from reading, or from signed-language input.
Feedback, or, in particular, corrective feedback, has frequently been seen
in theories of language learning. One can go back to behaviorist theories
where correction was seen as an important part of learning. In today’s
world, one has to look at what learners bring to the task of language
learning in terms of their internal capacities. By this I mean what indi-
vidual characteristics are relevant to understanding the intent of feed-
back. For example, Gass et al. (2013) considered working memory and
inhibition as individual characteristics and the extent to which each con-
tributed to a learner’s ability to learn from corrective feedback. Unlike
previous studies that focused solely on working memory and learning
from interaction (e.g., Mackey et al., 2002), Gass et al. (2013) found that
those individuals who were better at inhibiting irrelevant information
were also better at learning from interaction. There was no difference in
learning from interaction based on working memory differences. In
today’s research, there is an emphasis on understanding what attributes
contribute to obtaining benefits from interaction. Output is crucial to
obtaining feedback, for if there is no output, there is no opportunity for
feedback.
How do you compare the role of language, society, and internal mecha-
nisms in either facilitating or blocking interlanguage development? Are any of
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
responda por alli, sino de pura
piedad el equo echo que por
aquellas concauidades
resuena[741]. En grandes alaridos
y miseria passó la desdichada
aquel rato hasta que la mañana
aclaró, y ansi como el alua
començó a ronper, ronca de llorar,
todo su rostro y delicados
miembros despedaçados con las
vñas, tornó de nueuo a correr la
ribera y vio que a vna parte subia
vn peñasco muy alto sobre el mar,
en que con gran impetu batian las
olas, y alli sin algun temor se
subió, y mirando lexos, agora
porque viesse yr las velas
inchadas, o porque al deseo y
ansia se le antojó, començó a dar
bozes llamando a su Andronico,
hiriendo con furia las palmas; y
ansi cansada, llena de dolor, cayó
en el suelo amorteçida; y despues
que de gran pieza boluió en si
començó a dezir. Di, infiel traidor,
¿por qué huyes de mi, que ya me
tenias vençida? Pues tanto te
amaua esta desdichada, ¿en qué
podia dañar tus deleytes? Pues
lleuas contigo el alma, ¿por qué
no llenaste este cuerpo que tanta
fe te ha tenido? ¡O perfido
Andronico! ¿Este pago te mereçio
este mi coraçon que tanto se
enpleó en tí, que huyendo de mí
con tus nueuos amores me dexas
aqui hecha pasto de fieras? ¡O
amor! ¿Quién será aquella
desuenturada que sabiendo el
premio que me das de[742] mi fe,
no quiera antes que amar ser
comida de sierpes? ¿De quien me
quexaré? ¿De mí, porque tan
presto a ti, Andronico, me rendí
desobedeciendo a mi padre y
recusando a Raymundo? ¿O
quexarme he de ti, traidor
fementido, que en pago desto me
das este galardon? Juzguelo
Dios; y pues mis obras fueron por
la fe del matrimonio que no se
deue violar, pues la tuya es
verdadera trayçion arrastrado
seas en campo por mano de tus
enemigos. ¿Quien contara el
angustia, llanto, duelo, querella y
desauentura de tanta belleza y
mujer desdichada? yo me
marauillo cómo el çielo no se
abrio de piedad viendo desnudos
aquellos tan delicados miembros
gloria de naturaleza desamparada
de su amante, hecha manjar y
presa de fieras, esperando su
muerte futura. No puedo dezir
más; porque me siento tal, que de
pena y dolor reuiento. Y[743] ansi
con la gran ansia que la
atormentaua se tornó a desmayar
en el medio de vn prado teniendo
por cabezera una piedra, y
porque Dios nunca desampara a
los que con buena intinçion son
fieles, suçedio que auiendo
Raymundo conquistado el reyno
de Siçilia boluia vitorioso por el
mar, y aportando a aquella ysla,
aunque desierta se apeó por
gozar del agua fresca, y andando
con su arco y saetas por la ribera
solo, por se solazar, vio de lexos
a Drusila desnuda, tendida en el
suelo; y como la vio, avnque
luego le pareçió ser fiera, quando
reconoçió ser muger vinose para
ella, y como çerca llegó y halló
ser Drusila enmudeçió sin poder
hablar, pensando si por huyr dél
se auia desterrado aqui quando a
su padre le mató. De lastima della
començó á llorar, y ella boluiendo
en si se leuantó del suelo y muy
llena de verguença se sentó en la
piedra. Pareçia alli sentada como
solian los antiguos pintar a Diana
quando junto a la fuente está
echando agua a Antheon en el
rostro. O como pintan las tres
deesas ante Paris en el juizio de
la mançana, y quando trabaja
encogiendose cubrir el pecho y el
vientre descubresele mas el
costado. Era su blancura que a la
nieue vençia. Los ojos, pechos,
mexillas, nariz, boca, honbros,
garganta que Drusila mostraua se
podia anteponer a quantas en el
mundo ay de damas bellas[744]; y
despues desçendiendo mas abajo
por aquellos miembros secretos
que por su honestidad trabajaua
en cubrir, en el mundo no tenian
en velleza par; y como acabaua
de llorar pareçia su rostro como
suele ser de primavera alguna
vez el çielo, y como queda el sol
acabando de llouer auiendo
desconbrado todo el nublado de
sobre la tierra; y ansi Raymundo
captiuo de su velleza le dixo:
¿Vos no soys, mi señora, Drusila?
Al qual ella respondió: yo soy la
desdichada hija del rey de
Maçedonia; y luego alli le contó
por estenso todo lo que por
Andronico su esposo pasó, y
como viniendose para su tierra la
auia dexado sola alli como ve. El
se marauilló a tanta fe auer
hombre que diesse tan mal
galardon, y le dixo: pues yo,
señora, soy vuestro fiel amante
Raymundo de Traçia, y porque
me menospreçiastes me atreui a
os enojar; yo tengo el vuestro
reyno de Maçedonia guardado
para vos, juntamente con mi
coraçon, y quanto yo tengo está a
vuestro mandar; yo quiero tomar
la empresa de vuestra satisfaçion;
y diziendo esto saltó al nauio y
tomó vnas preçiosas vestiduras, y
solo sin alguna compañia se las
boluió uestir, y la truxo al nauio,
donde dandola a comer algunas
conseruas la consoló; y dados a
la vela la lleuó a la çiudad de
Constantinopla donde estaua su
padre, el qual como supo que
traya a Drusila y mucho a su
voluntad reçibio gran plazer, y
luego Raymundo se dispuso yr a
tomar la satisfaçion de Andronico
que se auia lançado en algunas
villas del reyno de Maçedonia, por
ser marido de Drusila; y como no
estaua en lugar[745] avn conoçido
no se pudo defender, que en
breue Raymundo le vençio, y
como le hubo a las manos le hizo
atar los pies a la cola de su
cauallo y heriendole fuertemente
de las espuelas le truxo por el
campo hasta que le despedaçó
todo el cuerpo, y ansi le pusieron
por la justiçia de Dios aqui al ayre
como le ves, en pena de su
ingratitud; y Raymundo en plazer
y contento de aquellos reynos se
casó con Drusila, los quales dos
se gozaron por muchos años en
su amor, y enbiaron a Sophrosina
para su madre a Lydia con mucho
plazer, y despues el rey de
Armenia, por ruegos del rey de
Traçia, boluió el reyno de Lydia a
Sophrosina y a su madre, casó su
hijo con Sophrosina y viuieron
todos en prosperidad. Ansi que
ves aqui la pena que se da a este
maluado por su ingratitud.
Miçilo.—Por çierto, gallo, el
cuento me ha sido de gran
piedad, y la pena es qual mereçe
ese traydor. Agora proçede en tu
peregrinaçion.
Gallo.—Luego como subimos al
çielo empireo, que es el çielo
superior, nos alunbró vna
admirable luz que alegró todo el
spiritu con vn nueuo y particular
plazer, que no ay lengua ni avn
entendimiento que se sepa
declarar. Era este çielo firme, que
en ningun tienpo se mueue, ni
puede mouer, porque fue criado
para eternal morada y palaçio real
de Dios; y con él en el prinçipio de
su creaçion fueron alli criados vna
inumerable muchedunbre de
inteligençias, spiritus angelicos
como en lugar proprio y deputado
para su estançia y a ellos natural.
Como es lugar natural el agua
para los pescados, y el ayre para
las aues, y la tierra para los
animales fieros y de vso de
razon[746]. Este çielo es de
imensa y inestimable luz, y de vna
diuina claridad resplandeçiente
sobre humano entendimiento y
capaçidad. Por lo qual se llama
Enpireo, que quiere dezir fuego; y
no porque sea de naturaleza y
sustançia de fuego, sino por el
admirable resplandor y glorioso
alumbramiento que de sí emana y
proçede. Aquí está el lugar
destinado ante la constituçion del
mundo para silla y trono de Dios,
y para todos los que han de reinar
en su diuino acatamiento. La qual
luz quanto quiera que en si sea
clarissima y acutissima no la
pueden sufrir los ojos de nuestra
mortalidad, como los ojos de la
lechuza que no pueden sufrir la
luz y claridad del sol. Ni tanpoco
esta luz bienauenturada alumbra
fuera de aquel lugar. En
conclusion es tan admirable esta
luz y claridad que tiene a la luz
del sol y luna, çielos y planetas
ventaja sin conparaçion. Es tanta
y tan inestimable la ocupaçion en
que se arrebata el alma alli, que
de ninguna cosa que acá tenga,
ni dexa ni se acuerda allá. Ni más
se acuerda de padre, ni madre, ni
parientes, ni amigos, ni hijos, ni
muger más que si nunca los
huuiera visto. Ni piensa, ni mira,
ni considera mal ni infortunio que
les puede[747] acá venir. Sino solo
tiene cuenta y ocupaçion en aquel
gozo inestimable que no puede
encareçer.
Miçilo.—¡O gallo! qué
bienaventurada cosa es oyrte. No
me pareçe sino que lo veo todo
ante mi. Pues primero que llegues
a Dios y á dezirme el estado de
su magestad, te ruego me digas
la disposiçion del lugar.
Gallo.—Eran vnos canpos, vna
llanura que los ojos del alma no
los puede alcançar el fin. Eran
campos y estauan cubiertos
porque era casa real donde el
Rey tiene todos sus cortesanos
de sí; y mira bien agora, Miçilo,
que en aquel lugar auia todas
aquellas cosas que en el mundo
son de estima, y que en el mundo
pueden causar magestad,
deleyte, hermosura, alegria y
plazer; y otras muchas más sin
cuento ni fin. Pero solo esto
querria que con sola el alma
entendiesses; que todo aquello
que allá ay es de mucho más
virtud, exçelençia, fuerça,
elegançia y resplandor que en las
que en el mundo ay, sin ninguna
conparaçion[748]. Porque en fin
has de considerar que aquellas
estan en el çielo, naçieron en el
çielo, adornan el çielo, y avn son
de la çelestial condiçion para el
seruiçio y acatamiento de Dios, y
ansi has de considerar con
quanta ventaja deuen á estas
exceder. En tanta manera que
puedes creer, o presumir que
aquello es lo verdadero y lo que
tiene vibo ser, y que es sonbra lo
de acá, o fiçion. O que lo del çielo
es natural, y lo del mundo es
artifiçial y contrahecho y sin algun
valor. Como la ventaja que ay
entre[749], vn rubi, o[750] vn
diamante hecho en los hornos del
vidrio en[751] Venecia, en
Cadahalso, que no ay cosa de
menos estima; y mira avn quánta
ventaja le haze vn natural
diamante que fue naçido en las
minas de acá; que puesto en las
manos de vn prinçipe no se
puede apreçiar ni estimar. Auia
por comunes piedras por el suelo
de aquellos palaçios y praderias
esmeraldas, jaçintos, rubies,
carbuncos, topaçios, perlas,
çafires, crisotoles y diamantes, y
por entre estas corrian muy
graçiosas y perenales fuentes,
que con su meneo hazian spiritual
contento que el alma solo puede
sentir. Auia demas destas piedras
y gemas que conoçemos acá
otras infinitas de admirable
perfeçion, y avn deues creer que
por ser naçida allá qualquiera
piedra que por alli estaua çien
mundos no la podrian pagar
¡tanta y tan admirable era su
virtud! Ansi con este mesmo
presupuesto puedes entender y
considerar qué era el oro de alli y
todo lo demas. Porque no es
razon que me detenga en te
encareçer la infinidad de cosas
preçiosas y admirables que auia
allí; la multitud de árboles que a la
contina estan con sus flores y
frutas; y quanto mas sabrosas,
dulçes y suaues que nunca
humana garganta gustó. Aquella
muchedunbre de yeruas y flores;
que jazmines, oliuetas, alelies,
albahacas, rosas, azuzenas,
clabellinas, ni otras flores de por
acá dauan alli olor; porque las
pribauan otras muchas más que
auia sin numero por alli. En vn
gran espaçio que por
entendimiento humano no se
puede conprehender estaua
hecho vn admirable teatro
preçiosamente entoldado, del
medio del qual salia un trono de
diuina magestad. Auia tanto qué
ver y entender en Dios que al
juizio y entendimiento no le sobró
punto ni momento de tienpo para
poder contemplar la manera del
edifiçio y su valor. Basta que asi
como quien en sueños se le
representa vn inumerable cuento
de cosas que en confuso las ve
en particular, ansi mientra
razonauamos los miradores
açerca del diuino poder eché los
ojos y alcançé á juzgar ser aquel
trono de vna obra, de vna
entalladura, de vn musayco,
moçaraue y tareçe que la lengua
humana le haze gran baja, ultraje
y injuria presumirlo conparar,
tasar o juzgar. Que aun presumo
que a los bienauenturados spiritus
les está secreto, reseruado solo a
Dios, porque no hace a su
bienauenturança auerlo de saber.
En este trono estaua sentado
Dios; de cuyo rostro salia vn
diuino resplandor, vna deydad
que hazia aquel lugar de tanta
grandeza, magestad y admirable
poder que a todos engendraua vn
terrible espanto, reuerençia y
pabor.
Miçilo.—¡Oh gallo! aqui me
espanta donde estoy en oyrtelo
representar. Pero dime ¿a qué
parte tenia el rostro Dios?
Gallo.—Mira, Miçilo, que en esto
se muestra su gran poder,
magestad y valor; que en el çielo
no tiene espaldas Dios, porque a
todas partes tiene su rostro
entero, y en ninguna parte del
çielo el bienauenturado está que
no vea rostro a rostro la cara a su
magestad; porque en este punto
está toda su bienauenturança que
se resume en solo ver a Dios; y
es este preuillegio de tan alto
primor que donde quiera que está
el bienauenturado, avnque
estuuiesse acaso en el infierno, ó
en purgatorio se le comunicaua
en su vision Dios, y en ninguna
parte estaria que entero no le
tuuiesse ante sí.
Miçilo.—Dime ¿allá en el çielo
viades y oyades todo lo que se
hazia y dezia acá en el mundo?
Gallo.—Después que los
bienauenturados estan en el
acatamiento de Dios ni ven ni
oyen lo que se dize y haze acá,
sino en el mesmo Dios, mirando a
su diuina magestad reluzen las
cosas a los santos en él.
Miçilo.—Pues dime,
¿comunicales Dios todo quanto
passa acá? ¿Ve mi padre y mi
madre lo que yo hago agora aqui
si están delante Dios?
Gallo.—Mira, Miçilo, que avnque
te he dicho que todo lo que los
bienauenturados ven es mirando
á Dios no por eso has de
entender que les comunica Dios
todas las cosas que passan acá.
Porque no les comunica sino
aquellas cosas de más alegria y
más plazer y augmento de su
gloria, y no las cosas
inpertinentes que no les
caussasse gozo su comunicaçion.
Porque no es razonable cosa que
comunique Dios á tu padre que tú
adulteras acá, o reniegas y
blasfemas de su poder y
majestad. Pero alguna vez podrá
ser que le comunique que tú
eres[752] bueno, limosnero,
deuoto y trabajador. Quiero te dar
un exemplo porque mejor me
puedas entender. Pongamos por
caso que estamos agora en vn
gran tenplo, y que en el lugar que
está el retablo en el altar mayor
estuuiesse vn poderoso y grande
espejo de vn subtil y fino azero. El
qual por su linpieza y polideza y
perfeçion mostrasse a quien
estuuiesse junto á él todo quanto
passa y entra en la iglesia, tan en
particular que aun los affectos del
alma mostrasse de quantos
entrassen alli. Entonçes sin mirar
a los que estan en el tenplo, con
mirar al espejo verias todas
quantas cosas alli passan aunque
se hiziessen en los rincones muy
ascondido. Pero con esto
pongamos que este espejo
tuuiesse tal virtud que no te
comunicasse otra cosa de todas
quantas alli passan sino las que
te conueniessen saber. Como si
dixessemos que te mostrasse los
que entran[753] alli a rezar, a llorar
sus pecados, a dar limosna y
adorar a Dios. Pero no te
mostrasse ni viesses en él el[754]
que entra a hurtar los frontales: ni
los que entran a murmurar de su
proximo: ni avn los que entran alli
a tratar canbios y contratos
yliçitos y profanos, porque los
tales no aprouechan auerlos tú de
saber. Pues desta manera deues
entender que es Dios vn diuino
espejo a los bienauenturados,
que todo lo que passa en el
mundo reluze en su magestad:
pero solo aquello ve el
bienauenturado que haze á su
mayor bien, y no lo demas. Pero
alguna vez aconteçe que es tanta
la vanidad de las petiçiones que
suben a Dios de acá que muestra
Dios reyrse en las oyr, por ver a
los mundanos tan neçios en su
oraçion. Unos que les dé vn
reyno, otros que se muera su
padre para heredarle. Otros
suplican a Dios que su muger le
dexe por heredero, otros que le
dé vengança de su hermano; y
algunas vezes permite Dios que
redunde en su daño la neçia
petiçion. Como vn dia que
notablemente vimos que se reya
Dios, y mirando hallamos qué era,
porque auia un mes que le
inportunaua vna mugerzilla
casada que le truxiesse un amigo
suyo de la guerra, y la noche que
llegó los mató el marido juntos a
ella y a él. De aqui se puede
colegir a quién se deue hazer la
oraçion, y qué se deue en ellas
pedir, porque no mueua en ella a
risa a Dios. Que pues las cosas
van por via de Dios a los santos, y
en él ven los santos lo que passa
acá, será cordura que se
haga[755] la oraçion a Dios.
Miçilo.—¿No es liçito hazer
oraçion a los Santos, y pedirles
merçed?
Gallo.—Si, liçito es: porque me
hallo muy pecador con mil
fealdades que no oso pareçer
ante Dios. O como ora la iglesia,
que dize en todas sus oraçiones
ansi[756]: Dios, por los méritos de
tu santo N. nos haz dignos de tu
graçia, y despues merezcamos tu
gloria. ¿Y vosotros pensais que
os quiere más algun santo que
Dios? No por çierto; ¿ni que es
mas misericordioso, ni que ha
más conpasion de vos que Dios?
No por çierto. Pero pedislo a los
santos porque nunca estais para
hablar con Dios, y porque son
tales las cosas que pedis que
aueis verguença de pedirlas a
Dios, ni pareçer con tales
demandas ante él, y por eso
pedislas a ellos. Pues mirad que
solo deueis de pedir el fin y los
medios para él. El fin es la
bienauenturança. Esta sin tasa se
ha de pedir. Pero avn muchos se
engañan en esto, que no saben
cómo la piden: Es vn honbre
vsurero, amançebado, homiçiano,
enuidioso y otros mil viçios: y
pide: Señor dadme la gloria. Por
çierto que es mucha razon que se
ria Dios de vos, porque pedis
cosa que siendo vos tal no se os
dará.
Miçilo.—Pues ¿cómo la tengo de
pedir?
Gallo.—Desta manera:
mejorando primero la vida, y
despues dezid á Dios: Señor,
suplicos yo que resplandezca en
mi vuestra gloria. Porque en el
bueno resplandeçe la gloria de
Dios; y siendolo vos darse os ha;
y pues en los bienes eternos ay
que saber cómo se han de pedir,
quánto más en los medios, que
son los bienes temporales. Que
no ansi atreguadamente los aueis
de pedir para que se rian[757] de
vos, sino con medida, si cumplen
como medios para vuestra
saluaçion. ¿Que sabeis si os
saluareis mejor con riqueza que
con pobreza? ¿O mejor con salud
que con enfermedad?
Miçilo.—Pues dime, gallo, pues
es ansi[758] como tú dices, que
ninguna cosa, ni petiçion va a los
santos sino por via de Dios, y él
se la representa a ellos, ¿porqué
dize la iglesia en la letania:
Sancte Petre, ora pro nobis?
Sancte Paule, ora pro nobis?
Porque si yo deseasse mucho
alcançar vna merçed de vn señor,
superflua cosa me pareçeria
escreuir a vn su criado vna carta
para que me fuesse buen terçero,
si supiesse yo çierto que la carta
auia de yr primero a las manos
del señor que de su pribado.
Porque me ponia a peligro, que
no teniendo gana el señor de me
la otorgar rasgasse la carta, y se
me dexasse de hazer la merçed
por solo no auer interçesor.
Gallo.—Pues mira que esta
ventaja tiene este prinçipe
çelestial a todos los de la tierra,
que por solo ver que hazeis tanto
caudal de su criado y pribado y os
estimais por indignos de hablar
con su magestad, tiene por bien
otorgar la petiçion, avn muchas
vezes reteniendo la carta en sí.
Porque a Dios bastale entender
de vos que soys deuoto y amigo
de su santo que ama él, y ansi
por veros a vos deuoto de su
santo[759] os otorga la merçed; y
poco va que comunique con el
santo que os la otorgó por amor
dél, o por sola su voluntad.
Miçilo.—Por çierto, gallo, mucho
me has satisfecho a muchas
cosas que deseaua saber hasta
aqui, y avn me queda mucho
mas. Deseo agora saber el
asiento y orden que los ángeles y
bienauenturados tienen en el
çielo, y en qué se conoce entre
ellos la ventaja de su
bienauenturança. Ruegote mucho
que no reuses ni huyas de
conplazer a mi, que tan ofreçido y
obligado me tienes a tu amistad.
Pues de oy más no señor, sino
amigo y compañero, y aun
disçipulo me puedes llamar.
Gallo.—No deseo, Miçilo, cosa
más que auerte de conplacer;
pero pues el dia es venido
quedese lo que me pides para el
canto que se seguirá[760].
Fin del trezeno[761] canto del gallo

de Luçiano.
NOTAS:
[710] R. (Tachado), entretexido.
[711] R. (Tachado), entretexido.
[712] G., duodeçimo.
[713] Falta en el ms. R.
[714] (Tachado). Siguesse el treçeno canto del Gallo de Luçiano,
orador griego, contrahecho en el castellano por el mesmo autor.
(Antes se leía), interprete.
[715] G., confiaua.
[716] G., que.
[717] G., fatigandose.
[718] G., en la sala real, donde hallando al rey, puesta de rodillas
ante él.
[719] G., dos.
[720] G., la çiudad.
[721] G., diziendo.
[722] G., como supiesse.
[723] G., se entro en el reyno de.
[724] G., en pago el.
[725] G., vna.
[726] G., y le.
[727] G., a todos.
[728] G., reyna de Lydia.
[729] G., luego como entraron en el mar les vino una tormenta
muy furiosa, por la qual.
[730] G., en el mar Egeo.
[731] G., dias del mar.
[732] G., auiendo çenado, Drusila mando sacar.
[733] G., la.
[734] R. (Tachado), juntos.
[735] G., deleznandose por la cama se leuantó.
[736] G., a los marineros y gente.
[737] G., echando.
[738] G., vuscando.
[739] G., lo.
[740] G., rasgando.
[741] G., que habita y resuena por aquellas concauidades.
[742] G., das a.
[743] G., pues.
[744] quantas naturaleza tiene formadas hasta agora.
[745] G., y como no era avn.
[746] G., animales, hombres y fieras.
[747] G., pueda.
[748] R. (Nota al pie de la página): Gregorius super Job, cap. 14.
Et vide Johanem Echium super Euangelium secunde dominice
post Pentecosten, homilia 4.
[749] G., de.
[750] G., o de.
[751] G., de.
[752] G., ser tu.
[753] G., entrassen.
[754] G., al.
[755] G., hazer.
[756] G., haze oraçion la iglesia, diziendo.
[757] G., se ria Dios.
[758] G., pues es ansi, gallo.
[759] G., en esta deuoçion.

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Talking About Second Language

Acquisition Karim Sadeghi

“This is a compilation of fascinating interviews conducted by Karim Sadeghi

“Karim Sadeghi successfully provides a captivating overview of the field of SLA

ISBN 978-3-030-99757-1 ISBN 978-3-030-99758-8 (eBook)

not a discipline but just a subfield of cognitive psychology (Doughty &

Curtin University, Perth, Australia Rod Ellis

The initial idea for this unique-in-approach, conversation-based volume,

May 2022 Karim Sadeghi

1 SLA at 55: What Are the Key Issues? 1

Photo 2.1 Susan Gass 21

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 1

explosion of information, which makes it very difficult, if not impossible,

Although scholars disagree on what is meant by ‘language’ as one of

The Rise of SLA

If we want to understand where we are now, we need to consider where we

Key Issues/Concepts in SLA

relevant concerns and questions. In a recent volume, for example,

L2 learners or native speakers), learner attributes, and social context. He

Phase 1 (1960s and 1970s)—Making a Start. Research areas: order and

A comparison of the above volumes suggests that SLA experts may

Factors Affecting SLA

with which a second language is learned, at least as far as language skills

a necessary (but not sufficient) condition to move from stage i [current

Talking about Second Language Acquisition

automatically and effortlessly in naturalistic contexts. One plausible

Kerlinger, F. N. (1979). Behavioral research: A conceptual approach. Holt,

Skehan, P. (2012). Language aptitude. In S. Gass & A. Mackey (Eds.), The

Photo 2.1 Susan Gass

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 21

Section I: Your Life Story

Section II: Your Contributions to SLA

that seminar, I began to think about language learning and my ideas

As mentioned above, much of my work has focused on interaction.

A similar book of yours, Input, Interaction, and the Second Language

My response to this question comes in large part from my experience

Section III: Current and Future Trends in SLA

proposed a differentiation between acquisition and learning, where the

Fin del trezeno[761] canto del gallo

You might also like

Curtin University, Perth, Australia Rod Ellis

1 SLA at 55: What Are the Key Issues? 1

Photo 2.1 Susan Gass 21

The Rise of SLA

Key Issues/Concepts in SLA

Factors Affecting SLA

Talking about Second Language Acquisition

Section I: Your Life Story

Section II: Your Contributions to SLA

Section III: Current and Future Trends in SLA