Grammar Instruction for Second Language Development: Bridging the Socio-Cognitive Divide in Theory and in Practice

Grammar Instruction for Second Language Development offers a theoretical and practical framework for understanding how classroom instruction shapes second language development, with a particular focus on the cognitive and social factors that influence successful outcomes.

Across 11 comprehensive chapters, Toth equips readers with a holistic understanding of effective classroom practices, first tracing the twentieth-century theories that informed now outmoded grammar-centered instruction, then reviewing current cognitive and social thinking on language and linguistic development. He moves beyond a purely theoretical approach by illustrating the main featured theories―generative, construction-based, and systemic-functional theories of language; and skill acquisition, usage-based, processability, conversation-analytic, sociocultural, socialization, and identity theories of language learning―through examples of real-life exchanges between teachers and learners. In this way, this book aligns with complex dynamic systems theory, demonstrating that what teachers say and do with language, both explicitly and implicitly, is of vital importance to their learners’ linguistic development.

With a clear and accessible narrative style, this book serves as a reliable resource for second language scholars and especially for teachers and professionals, actively addressing the research-to-practice gap in second language instruction.

Paul D. Toth is Professor of Spanish applied linguistics at Temple University in Philadelphia, USA, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses and mentors doctoral students. Since 1991, he has taught high school and university-level Spanish, coordinated language curricula, and supervised pre-service teachers. He has published numerous research articles and book chapters on instructed second language learning from a variety of theoretical perspectives and was twice awarded the Paul Pimsleur Award for research excellence from the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.