DOI: 10.1002/tesj.

414

M AT E R I A L S & M E D I A R E V I E W

S E CO N D LA NG UAGE AC Q U IS IT ION APPLIED TO ENGLISH

LANG UAG E TE ACHING

Nathaniel Lotze
Dhofar University
E-mail: [email protected]

Michael Lessard-Clouston. TESOL International Association. ISBN 978-1-94279-994-8.

Reflective questions. Price USD 18.95 (pbk). viii + 49 pages.

In Second Language Acquisition Applied to English Language Teaching, Lessard-­Clouston offers a

“theory-­to-­practice” take on teaching: a remodel of the ivory tower into a classroom. Books of this
sort are nearly always synthesis rather than thesis, and this one is no different. Its approach, however,
sets it apart.
It is a quick read. Lessard-­Clouston, a professor of applied linguistics and specialist in second language
acquisition, discusses his topic in a trim 49 pages. His goal, however, is to be not comprehensive but com-
prehensible: “jargon-­free and accessible” (p. vii). He writes as a teacher to teachers in clear, simple prose.
This point is worth noting because not all English teachers are native English speakers. At the university
where I teach, for instance, only about a quarter of us are from Kachru’s (1992) inner circle countries.
Lessard-­Clouston recognizes this dynamic and pitches his writing accordingly. His approach is equally
simple: he sums up theories on second language acquisition and asks how they can be applied to class-
room practices. He does so by embedding boxes with reflective questions every page or so, effectively
turning the book into a guided discussion that asks the reader to interact and apply theory to practice.
He is scarcely three sentences into Chapter 1 when his first reflective question asks the reader to
define second language acquisition. In moving from the question to its answer, he leans a bit heavily
on Cook (2016) but acknowledges a broad enough theoretical base to give the reader a decently well-­
rounded view of what second language acquisition is. He concludes that a better understanding of the
field will help teachers to better understand their role in the classroom, as well as students’ roles as
both learners and users of a second language. This distinction between learning and using is a crucial
one, and one which Lessard-­Clouston develops as the book progresses.
He is also careful to distinguish between English as a second language (ESL) and English as a for-
eign language (EFL). In EFL contexts, English is not widely spoken as a first language, and learners
normally have much less opportunity to use it in natural communicative situations. Thus, while “the
underlying learning processes are essentially the same” (Mitchell & Myles, 2004, p. 6), the application
of theory to classroom practices can look quite different. The reader needs to bear this distinction in
mind when answering the reflective questions.
If Chapter 1 is Cook-­heavy, Chapter 2 unapologetically turns to a giant in the field of second
language acquisition in discussing Krashen’s (2003) monitor model, a set of five theories covering
acquisition versus learning, the natural order hypothesis, monitoring, input, and affective filters. The
chapter is a scant four pages, but I found myself nodding at every turn thinking of how I had seen each
theory present in the classroom. The theories, of course, are Krashen’s, but Lessard-­Clouston’s ability

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to sum them up in layman’s terms and springboard them into thought-­provoking reflective questions
makes for good reading and even better thought.
Chapters 3–5 unpack three topics: input, output, and interaction. In Chapter 3, Lessard-­Clouston dis-
cusses different types of input but points out that input is useless if it falls on deaf ears—that is, that a class-
room can be content-­rich without students ever cashing in. He asks the reader to think further about this
point with a reflective question asking how students can be helped along in both paying attention to input
and learning to use it. One possible answer, he implies as he transitions to Chapter 4, is output. He soft-­
pedals VanPatten’s (2003) claim that output must have communicative purpose, pointing to his experience
with students in China who practiced their pronunciation by memorizing and reciting famous speeches,
and instead backs Swain’s (1993) concept of pushed output and the necessity for students to both practice
grammatical encoding (not just decoding) and make trial runs of what they wish to communicate.
At this point, I wondered if the discussion of interaction in Chapter 5 was superfluous. After all, isn’t
interaction simply an exchange of input and output? Not precisely, says Lessard-­Clouston. It is a modified
exchange that supports the learning process. He points out that it is next to impossible for a classroom full
of students to acquire a second language via meaningful, one-­on-­one interactions with the teacher. The
workaround is that one student’s output is another’s input. He provides two examples of student interaction
in a Japanese university before offering four guidelines for enabling students to better interact with one
another. I found myself thinking, “That might work in Japan, but not in my context because …” only to run
up against a reflective question that asked me to think about what would work in my context.
Chapter 6 loops around to Krashen’s affective filters to discuss three variables in the learning pro-
cess: age, anxiety, and error correction. It is here that the book stumbles a bit. Lessard-­Clouston allows
that age is not crucial to the learning process, and that anyhow “teachers cannot do much about [it]” (p.
32). In that case, replacing the discussion of age with one of a different, more serious affective filter
(e.g., language shock) or a rundown of the learner differences described by Arabski and Wojtaszek
(2011) might have helped. Still, anxiety and error correction are highly relevant in any context, and
once again I found myself thinking of example after example from my own teaching experience.
In Chapter 7, the discussion shifts to how Tomlinson’s (2017) principles of language learning can
be used to assess teaching materials. Do the materials provide rich, recycled language input? Do they
engage students, both actively and cognitively? Do they help students connect form and meaning? Do
they provide students with opportunities to use the language? At only three pages (I am not counting
a widowed reflective question on the last page), this chapter is the shortest in the book and feels a
bit perfunctory. Lessard-­Clouston makes important connections between Tomlinson’s principles and
previously discussed theories from Krashen, Swain, and Nation (2013), but he lets Tomlinson do all
of the heavy lifting. A more well-­rounded discussion is necessary.
Chapter 8, on the other hand, swings in the other direction. It sums up five points where second
language acquisition and English language teaching intersect, as well as what the book itself is. It
is, Lessard-­Clouston concludes, a reality check on the complexity of second language acquisition, a
reminder about input, output, and interaction, a perspective on vocabulary and grammar (bricks and
mortar in our remodel metaphor), a call to refocus on the learner, and an encouragement that teaching
can make a real difference in second language acquisition. Are we ready to see our dream classroom,
it asks? Yet in some ways we are not ready because the chapter is a bit too well-­rounded for a conclu-
sion. It is noticeably longer than the previous chapters, more theoretical in its discussion, and rather
quotation-­heavy. To be fair, a different reader might view it as a grand finale. In that case, more reflec-
tive questions to help the reader interact with the discussion might have helped.
That said, the book has more than its share of strengths. First, Lessard-­Clouston’s writing style is
succinct and to-­the-­point. It also has voice, which helps to establish rapport with the reader and adds to
the book’s readability. Second, his use of examples is minimized. I am quite certain that he could have
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told a hundred stories from his teaching experience for each point that he makes, but he does not. The
result is that the book leaves room for the reader to supply the examples. There is power in restraint.
And herein lies the book’s greatest strength. The reflective questions help the reader not to sim-
ply read the book, but to interact with it. Second language acquisition is a wide-­ranging topic—far
too wide to cover in 49 pages. However, the book works across different contexts precisely because
the reader is able to contextualize its content via the reflective questions. The theories that Lessard-­
Clouston discusses are its foundation. The reflective questions are the scaffolding whereby the reader
is able to build theory into practice. They link the theories not to the classroom directly, but to the
teacher, who in turn links them to the classroom. The book is not the remodeler. The teacher is.
With that, we arrive at the book’s use. Lessard-­Clouston acknowledges that it is not a course in
second language acquisition; rather, it introduces a smorgasbord of theory while arguing for “a prin-
cipled yet eclectic approach to SLA” (p. 45). It might, then, be useful in an applied linguistics course
as a sketch of topics in second language acquisition applied to the classroom.
Its real niche, however, is with teachers, whether native or nonnative English speakers—and not
only English teachers. Notwithstanding the book’s title, the theories are relevant to second language
acquisition broadly, and an elementary school Spanish teacher could put the book to as good a use as
an English teacher at a university in the Gulf.
It also reads like a book club edition. In this light, the book would be most useful in one of two
ways: either as a short course in a series of professional development workshops, or as a reference
tool for teachers to read and re-­read, using the reflective questions to take stock of their classroom
practices, and thereby come to the particular kind of clarity afforded by a better understanding of both
their role and that of their students in the process of second language acquisition.

T H E AU T H O R

Nathaniel Lotze is a lecturer of English at Dhofar University. His educational background is in Semitic
linguistics, which comes in quite handy when teaching Arabic-speaking students. On the side, he is
also researching poetic traditions of Mahri, an indigenous language of Dhofar.

ORCID
Nathaniel Lotze  http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0667-9195

R E F E R E NC E S
Arabski, J., & Wojtaszek, A. (2011). Individual learner differences in SLA. Bristol, England: Multilingual Matters.
Cook, V. (2016). Second language learning and language teaching (5th ed.). London, England: Routledge.
Kachru, B. (1992). The other tongue: English across cultures. Champaign: University of Illinois Press.
Krashen, S. D. (2003). Explorations in language acquisition and use. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Mitchell, R., & Myles, F. (2004). Second language learning theories (2nd ed.). London, England: Hodder Arnold.
Nation, I. S. P. (2013). Learning vocabulary in another language (2nd ed.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Swain, M. (1993). The output hypothesis: Just speaking and writing aren’t enough. Canadian Modern Language Review,
50(1), 158–164. https://doi.org/10.3138/cmlr.50.1.158
Tomlinson, B. (2017). Achieving a match between SLA theory and materials development. In B. Tomlinson (Ed.),
Second language acquisition: Research and materials development for language teaching (pp. 3–22). London,
England: Routledge.
VanPatten, B. (2003). From input to output: A teacher’s guide to second language acquisition. New York, NY:
McGraw-Hill.