On the role of SLA in teaching and learning

Abstract

Three decades have passed since the publication of Leslie Beebe’s edited volume Issues in Second
Language Acquisition. As she deftly pointed out back then, it was a big job to summarize a whole field of
research. I have to admit that her statement rang true for this issue, too. A lot has happened in SLA over
these 30 years: Many subfields have emerged, and views on SLA have significantly expanded and
diversified. Thus, I would like to borrow the words of Beebe again and say in my Editorial Note that no single publication such as ours can do full justice to the developments and complexities of the current practice of SLA. We tried to be as inclusive as possible by offering many different strands of interest as topics for submission. The current issue represents a small number of the total submissions we finally settled on publishing after much deliberation and multiple reviews. However, they do represent current trends and interests, and we hope our readers will find them both informative and useful. There is a fair amount of valuable application that can be drawn from this issue, and—we also hope—a substantial amount of food for thought. The following paragraphs summarize the key aspects of each contribution.