The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Psycholinguistics

I am delighted to see this book. Second language acquisition research (SLA) has for some time suffered from a bifurcation into social and psycholinguistic strands, often seen as oppositional and incompatible. This handbook remedies this unfortunate state of affairs by recognizing the complexities of the bilingual mind and the need to understand how social context helps to shape it. Core psycholinguistic issues are viewed through a novel lens that focuses on the many shades and shapes of bilingualism. The contents are well-organized into five sections, each offering a different perspective. The list of authors – all leading figures in SLA – is impressive. This book is a must for researchers and students of SLA.

Prof. Rod Ellis, Curtin University, Australia

What an achievement! This is a go-to reference work, containing all the major themes, issues, nuances, and challenges that one could hope for, written by a large team of experts. The handbook brings together a huge range of questions and approaches for understanding language use, learning, and processing. There is a fine balance between offering, on the one hand, a grounding in historical theoretical and empirical work, and, on the other hand, syntheses of recent work, peppered with forward-looking insights. One for keeps.

Prof. Emma Marsden, University of York, United Kingdom

In the last two decades, there has been a virtual explosion of research on second language learning and bilingualism. The interest in these topics is not only because there is increased recognition that the world is multilingual, but also because the disciplines that study this topic have begun to converge as revealed by increasing cross-disciplinary collaboration. This volume presents a comprehensive view of the most exciting of these developments. Multilingualism becomes a lens for illuminating the learning and use of language itself and for bringing basic research and its translation together. The book will be of great interest to readers at all levels and from a large range of disciplinary persuasions.

Prof. Judith Kroll, University of California, Irvine, USA