I heard lots of comments about how Eric was missed at iFLT. Oh well, he does send this from Honduras:
Hey Ben –
This sums up the “facts” of SLA in a nutshell:
https://www.llas.ac.uk/resources/gpg/421
“Second language acquisition (SLA) research: its significance for learning and teaching issues” by Florence Myles.
If every FL/ESL teacher only had this knowledge and reflected on what it meant for his/her practice!
Here’s what Mark Knowles had to say about it: “Good linguistic realism. So few teachers are even aware of the basics of SLA and when someone like Myles comes along who speaks frankly about fairly commonly-held views among language scientists about how people acquire language and about how long it takes, teachers and the public often react with disbelief and interpret such work as that of someone with an agenda. Even people with a good deal of ‘linguistic’ can lash out at the sobering information that a good SLA researcher will produce.”
I’m finishing up Myles’ co-authored book with Mitchell titled Second Language Learning Theories and I highly recommend it! It gives a good overview of the numerous SLA theories as well as the criticisms and it’s very accessible for a non-expert, e.g. the chapter on UG really helped me understand that theory.
Eric