This article begins with a review of second language acquisition research leading up to the 1997 article by Firth and Wagner. We argue that the Firth and Wagner article did not represent a new direction, but rather continued a type of argumentation that was already prevalent in the field at the time of the 1997 publication. We identify 3 issues as key in Firth and Wagner's argument: the scope of the research question, the multiple identities of research participants, and the context considered in research. A survey of 4 journals in the field and their treatment of these 3 issues, beginning before Firth and Wagner (1997) and leading up to the present, suggests that the article did not result in significant changes to the field and its target questions. The significance of Firth and Wagner's article lies in its licensing of situated research, and that broadening of the research base is undoubtedly positive.Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Recasts are an important type of implicit negative feedback that has attracted much attention in both L1 research and SLA research. The utility of recasts in face-to-face interaction has been empirically established, and the contingency of recasts is argued to be the key. However, the efficacy of recasts in computer-mediated communication (CMC), text-based online chatting in particular, remains questionable due to the possible violation of this contingency factor in the "split negotiation routines" commonly observed in CMC discourse. This study used a repeated-measure design to examine the potential impact of the contingency of recasts on noticing as well as some contextual factors that might mediate the contingency effect on the noticing of recasts. In this study, 17 ESL learners were invited to chat with one researcher on two dyadic communication tasks, one preceded by prewriting and the other without. Think aloud protocols and stimulated recalls were used to measure the noticing of recasts. It was found that participants noticed contingent recasts significantly more often than noncontingent recasts. Furthermore, working memory and prewriting were found to mediate the contingency effect, and learner proficiency level was found neither pertinent to the noticing of recasts nor mediative of the contingency effect.

This article begins with a review of second language acquisition research leading up to the 1997 article by Firth and Wagner. We argue that the Firth and Wagner article did not represent a new direction, but rather continued a type of argumentation that was already prevalent in the field at the time of the 1997 publication. We identify 3 issues as key in Firth and Wagner's argument: the scope of the research question, the multiple identities of research participants, and the context considered in research. A survey of 4 journals in the field and their treatment of these 3 issues, beginning before Firth and Wagner (1997) and leading up to the present, suggests that the article did not result in significant changes to the field and its target questions. The significance of Firth and Wagner's article lies in its licensing of situated research, and that broadening of the research base is undoubtedly positive.Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

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THE NEUROBIOLOGY OF LEARNING: PERSPECTIVES FROM SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION. John H. Schumann, Sheila E. Crowell, Nancy E. Jones, Namhee Lee, Sara Ann Schuchert, and Lee Alexandra Wood. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2004. Pp. xiii + 212. $59.95 cloth, $34.50 paper.This volume is an attempt to relate neuroscience research to cognitive metaphors (e.g., auditory loop, Universal Grammar [UG], fossilization) used by SLA researchers and psycholinguists to describe language acquisition. The volume consists of six chapters, originally master's theses and PhD qualifying papers, and an introduction and conclusion by Schumann. The chapters review literature that pertains to the neurobiology of six subtopics: aptitude, motivation, procedural memory, declarative memory, memory consolidation, and attention. In the preface, Schumann suggests that the purpose of the volume is “to promote a neurobiology of language that starts with the brain and moves to behavior” (p. xi), although he acknowledges one page later that “empirical research on the hypothesized mechanisms may be some time off” (p. xii). The volume aims to convince the intended readership, SLA researchers who might know little or no neurobiology, that investing time in the study of the neuroscience of learning is critical to the field's progression.