Workers in the field of second language acquisition are now

in the enviable position of having available to them in a

readily accessible form a number of core texts which set out

the parameters and the perceived objectives of their field of

study. Journal articles and journals themselves abound, and

the subject itself increasingly finds a place, not only in

applied linguistics programs directed at language educators,

but also in courses concerned with linguistic and

psycholinguistic theory and even in other professional

programs targetting, for example, the communicatively

disordered and handicapped.

Given this availability, one might ask what new can be

contributed at this time, even by a volume as this most

comprehensive one by Diane Larsen-Freeman and Michael

Long, to the Applied Linguistics and Language Study series.

Their long-standing position and eminence as researchers in

the field would be one argument, but there are two others, the

one ineluctably connected to the other.