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We compared the acquisition of various dimensions of fluency by 28 students of French studying in three different learning contexts: formal language classrooms in an at home (AH) institution, an intensive summer immersion (IM) program, and a study abroad (SA) setting.

This study investigates the role of context of learning in second language (L2) acquisition. Participants were 40 native speakers of English studying Spanish for one semester in one of two different learning contexts-a formal classroom at a home university (AH) and a study abroad (SA) setting. The research looks at various indexes of oral performance gains-particularly gains in oral fluency as measured by temporal and hesitation phenomena and gains in oral proficiency based on the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI). The study also examines the relation these oral gains bore to L2-specific cognitive measures of speed of lexical access (word recognition), efficiency (automaticity) of lexical access, and speed and efficiency of attention control hypothesized to underlie oral performance. The learn-

Practice on cognitive tasks, in general, and word recognition tasks, in particular, will usually lead to faster and more stable responding. We present an analysis of the relationship between observed reductions in performance latency and latency variability with respect to whether processing has merely become faster across the board or whether a qualitative change, such as automatization, has taken place. The coefficient of variability (CV) - the standard deviation of response time divided by the mean latency - is shown to be useful for this purpose. A cognitive interpretation of the CV is given that relates it to issues of skill development.Data from second language learners' word recognition performance and from a simple detection task are presented which confirm predictions drawn from this interpretation of the cognitive significance of the CV. Initial improvement in a second language word recognition task was interpreted as involving more efficient controlled processing, which later gave way to automatization. The implications of this index of skill are discussed in relation to second language development and the general issue of automaticity of processing components in cognitive skills.

Many fluent bilinguals read their two languages with equal levels of comprehension but read their second language at a slower rate. The present study examined whether, compared with firstlanguage reading, slower second-language reading is associated with reduced involvement of automatic processing during lexical access. Subjects were bilinguals with fluent speaking and listening skills under ordinary conditions of communication and with equivalent comprehension of their first and second languages when reading and listening under speeded conditions. Half these subjects, however, read their first and second languages equally fast, and half read the second language more slowly than the first. Subjects were tested on a lexical decision task that manipulated expectations about the semantic relatedness of prime and target words and the stimulus onset asynchrony between them. Bilinguals with equal first-and second-language reading rates produced in each language a pattern of reaction times suggesting automatic processing, whereas bilinguals with a slower second-language reading rate did so in their first language but not in their second. 565So-called balanced or fluent bilinguals often have been the object of research into cognitive processes underlying bilingualism. One reason for research interest in fluent bilinguals is that, although under ordinary communication conditions they may demonstrate equivalent speaking, listening, and reading skills in their two languages, some aspects of a specific skill may be relatively weaker in one of the languages. In this case, the fluent bilingual presents an opportunity to compare skilled and less skilled performance by the same individual. Such a comparison may provide an opportunity to study the cognitive processes underlying the activity in question while avoiding the usual confound due to individual differences (Baron & Treiman, 1980). The present study was concerned with the reading performance of two types of fluent bilinguals in their first and second languages and examined the possibility of an association between reading skills and processes underlying retrieval from semantic memory. (The term fluent is used here because it emphasizes that, under normal