Promoting autonomy and independence (A & I) has for years been an accepted goal of Western education in general and has more recently joined such aims as developing “communicative competence” or using “authentic materials” in thecanons of second language teaching and learning. As is the case with other pedagogicalbandwagons we have jumped aboard, too little attention has been paid to its underlyingtheoretical bases and assumptions, and too few calls for empirical evidence of learning outcomes have been made. Benson and Voller offer a thought-provoking collection of papers that, although strongly endorsing the A & I movement in general, bring several of its implicit assumptions and values to conscious scrutiny and explore both apparent paradoxes and issuesfor debate.

The domains of tense and aspect have received considerable attention in the past twodecades. Both the perceptual and linguistic meanings that are involved in expressing temporalityhave been focused on, and investigators have set out to discover the linguistic forms used toexpress these meanings. Tense and Aspect in Discourse aims at providing a betterunderstanding of the textual and contextual interplay between aspectual meanings, linguisticforms, and their discourse functions. It provides a variety of very useful discussions of pertinentissues in this area.

Much of the existing literature on the bilingual language acquisition of preschoolchildren consists of single-child case studies conducted by parents who are trained linguists.Such parents had usually made special efforts to cultivate bilingualism in their children.

The purpose of this book is to provide language teachers with insights and tools for understanding some of the reasons why their adult students often encounter less-than-smoothsailing when trying to learn another language. The book explores a variety of case studies thatinvolve real students, thus bringing to life the human dimension of the learning difficultiespresented. Although some examples of ESL students are provided, the major focus is on foreignlanguage learners. Ehrman's felicitous writing style ensures that the book reads like anextended and intellectually stimulating conversation with the author.

Lynch, drawing on his experience of evaluation, in particular the Reading English forScience and Technology (REST) Project, aims to provide a “thorough theoreticalbackground for the evaluation of language education programs” and “thenecessary range of theory and practical techniques” (p. xi), and he highlightscontributions for “program evaluation . . . in the development of applied linguistics asa field of research” (p. x).

“Hablamos los dos. We speak both (p. 1).” A statement offered by a9-year-old girl defines the principle assertion of this book: Bilinguals have available to them atleast two distinct repertoires of language that they are able to manipulate and mix to achieve theirunique discourse needs and to express their multicultural identities. This book explores thenetwork of relationships of 20 Puerto Rican families in a low-income neighborhood calledel bloque in New York City. Zentella, herself a Nuyorican (New YorkPuertoRican), has provided us a window on a world as only an insider can. She follows the families inand out of el bloque for 13 years, monitoring their bilingual behavior and thesociolinguistic factors that contribute to maintenance or loss of bilingual ability.

The edited volume of the Proceedings of the 1994 Child Language Seminar has a scopeboth broad and ambitious. Not all participants have contributed to the volume and only onefeatured guest speaker's paper, A. Radford's “The nature ofchildren's initial clauses” (co-presented with H. Clahsen) is included, so we onlyget a tantalizing glimpse of the conference.

This book is dedicated to “all those working for the liquidation of sociolinguisticsas we know it” (p. 6). One of the dominant themes of this book is a conservativeskepticism about institutional claims to a knowledge of Indiansociolinguistics—western scholars and their “Indian cohorts” (p. 31,and passim) claiming to know the multilingual complexities of India. The nineessays, most previously published, are assembled in an attempt to deconstruct some of theestablished paradigms of Indian sociolinguistics, especially those that authors believe areguided by western models. The authors' dissatisfaction with the use of westernparameters in interpreting the social realities of India is shared by most, if not all, linguistsactive in research in Indian linguistics; this book presents, in one volume, critiques of theworks done in the past. After reading the book, whether or not one agrees with its statedagenda or its reinterpretation of the data, it is a brilliantly provocative, sometimes polemic,revisionist account of the multilingual realities of South Asia. The first nine essays offercritiques of studies in both micro- and macro-sociolinguistic traditions. The last two essaysreview two books: Gumperz's (1982) Language and social identity, andBhatia's (1987) A history of the Hindi grammatical tradition.

This book is a longitudinal study of negotiation of meaning in interactions among foreignlanguage learners (FLLs) of Spanish at a Dutch university, and interactions between thosestudents and native speakers (NSs) of Spanish.

American Sign Language (ASL), both as the focus of scholarly study and as anincreasingly popular foreign-language option for many secondary and university levelstudents, has made remarkable strides during recent years. With respect to the linguistics ofASL, there has been a veritable revolution in our understanding of the nature, structure, andcomplexity of the language since the publication of William Stokoe's landmarkSign Language Structure in 1960. Works on both theoretical aspects of thelinguistics ofASL and on the sociolinguistics of the Deaf community now abound, and the overall quality ofsuch works is impressively high. Also widely available now are textbooks designed to teachASL as a second language. Such textbooks vary dramatically in quality, ranging fromphrasebook and lexical guides to very thorough and up-to-date works focusing oncommunicative competence in ASL.

Imagine my surprise when I received an SLA textbook by Rod Ellis to review, and it turnedout to be a paperback weighing only 7 ½ ounces! Something must be different, and indeedit is: This new volume is intended for the novice student (or for others without academicengagement in linguistics). For such an audience, the volume opens up a fresh niche for SLAclasses, one that is not all that common, at least at North American universities.

Social linguistics is now in its second edition and has been integrated into aseries of publications edited by Allan Luke entitled Critical perspectives on literacy andeducation. Thoroughly revising his first edition, Gee offers researchers, teachers, andstudents a challenging compendium of theory and analysis of language use in society. Heintegrates social and political relations of power and dominance into his discussion ofliteracies, highlighting the potential ideological conflicts between non-mainstreamcommunities and schools, conflicts rooted in divergent uses, and evaluations of language.

This book is an ethnographic study of literacy in the social, cultural, and political context ofthe Latino community in Carpinteria, California. Much of the book is written as a narrative aboutthe community, its history, and its struggles with the schools. The book is also filled with thevoices of the community members in Spanish (translated into English).

This volume contains edited versions of 13 of the papers presented at a 1994 University ofEdinburgh conference entitled, “Issues and Perspectives in Language Learning: Scottishand Wider Dimensions.” The general topics include: I. The typical pattern of studies inlanguage departments (four papers), II. The relationship of different parts of degree curricula(four papers), III. Languages in the working world; learners, their backgrounds and expectations(one paper), IV. Developments of new methods and using new technology (three papers), V. Theparticular place of language study in Scotland (one paper), and VI. A summary report of theRound Table discussions.

Many will question Bickerton's claim that only humans are capable of mentalengagement with anything but the immediate present. However, the heart of hisargument—that language did not evolve as a development from high intelligence but isinstead what allowed that intelligence to develop at all—is undeniably compelling. Underthis conception, the emergence of language, not just intelligence, was what allowed humans toconquer the world. In support, Bickerton notes that the appearance of modern civilization waspreceded by eons by cultural stasis during which hominid brains were nevertheless increasingvastly in size, which suggests that something besides mere brain power created modern man. Healso notes that if human-like intelligence allowed world domination, then at least some animalsshould by now have developed it, even without language. Instead, only humans can profoundlyalter their surroundings, which suggests that language, the trait most unequivocally unique tohumans, is indeed the key to our hegemony. Bickerton even equates language and thought,arguing that their foundation upon the same syntax leaves no motivation to separate them, andconsiders both to evidence a layer of abstract representation unique to humans. In turn, heproposes that this layer is able to “observe” the lower layer, thus creating“consciousness.” The uniqueness of consciousness to humans is thus explained byits roots in a layer of representation unique to humans.

This first volume in an Oxford series of introductions to language study aims to provide boththe student of linguistics and the general reader with a broader overview of linguistic science.Widdowson attempts to present a coherent outline of the central issues in linguistics that isaccessible to the novice yet not simplistic. Following the series format, the volume is dividedinto four sections: Survey, Readings, References, and Glossary.

Edelsky's With Literacy and Justice for All (2nd ed., original workpublished 1991) is a strong argument for a holistic approach to language and literacy teaching.Although this “theory-in-practice” is primarily intended for L1 literacy teaching,Edelsky makes clear connections to its applicability in L2 classrooms as well. Writing andsecond languages are language; therefore, they can and should be acquired as childrenacquire their L1s: in meaningful situations of use. The premise, however, is that the teachergenuinely believes in the Whole Language ideology, which entails equality and empowerment ofall students.

The 15 short papers in this volume attempt to integrate the expertise and the rhetoric oflanguage policy, sociolinguistics, language teaching, and translation in internationaladministrative institutions.

This book presents and discusses efforts to develop Intelligent Computer Assisted LanguageLearning (ICALL) programs based on advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and naturallanguage processing (NLP). Sixteen of the book's 20 chapters provide descriptions ofparticular ICALL programs, divided into three categories: text-based language tutors andlearning environments, dialogue-based language games, and graphics-based language tutors andlearning environments. Four chapters at the end offer general commentary on ICALL from theperspectives of experimental psychology (by Brian MacWhinney), linguistics and AI (by AlanBailin), second language acquisition theory (by Nina Garret), and educational theory (byRebecca Oxford).

A Course in Language Teaching covers a wide variety of topics related tolanguage teaching, from reading to testing to syllabus design. The book contains 22 modulesorganized into seven sections. Each module contains short bits of prose followed by tasks,questions, applications, or sample activities. Most of the modules have boxes ofwell-summarized information on a particular point (e.g., types of grammar practice, ways ofpresenting new vocabulary, learner difficulties in listening).