Form-Focused Instruction and Second Language Learning

How does classroom language learning take place? How does an
understanding of second language acquisition contribute to language
teaching? In answering these questions, Rod Ellis reviews a wide
range of research on classroom learning, developing a theory of
instructed second language acquisition that has significant
implications for language teaching.

The early chapters of this book trace the attempts to explain
classroom language learning in terms of general theory of learning
(behaviorism) and the study of naturalistic language learning. The
middle chapters document the attempts of researchers to enter the
"black box" of the classroom in order to describe the
teaching-learning behaviors that take place there and to
investigate to what extent and in what ways instruction results in
acquisition.

The book concludes with a theory of classroom language learning.
This theory advances an explanation of the relationship between
explicit and implicit linguistic knowledge and in so doing accounts
for how both form-focused and meaning-focused instruction
contribute to second language acquisition in the classroom.