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and a majority culture. Work on identity among heritage speakers is in its infancy
(Alba, Logan, Lutz, & Stults, 2002 ; He, 2004 ; Potowski, 2007 ) but will undoubtedly
grow in the near future. Block’s text is highly accessible for graduate students
and even advanced undergraduates and would be a good auxiliary text in a
qualitative SLA research methods course.
REFERENCES
Alba , R. , Logan , J. , Lutz , A. , & Stults , B . ( 2002 ). Only English by the third generation? Loss
and preservation of the mother tongue among the grandchildren of contemporary
immigrants . Demography , 39 , 467 – 484 .
He , A. W . ( 2004 ). Identity construction in Chinese heritage language classes . Pragmatics ,
14 , 199 – 216 .
Mathews , G . ( 2000 ). Global culture/individual identity: Searching for a home in the cultural
supermarket . London : Routledge .
Norton , B . ( 2000 ). Identity and language learning . London : Longman .
Potowski , K . ( 2007 ). Language and identity in a dual immersion school . Clevedon, UK :
Multilingual Matters .
( Received 10 May 2009 )
Kim Potowski
University of Illinois at Chicago
doi:10.1017/S0272263109990362
SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND THE YOUNGER LEARNER:
CHILD’S PLAY? Jenefer Philp , Rhonda Oliver , and Alison Mackey (Eds.).
Amsterdam : Benjamins , 2008 . Pp. viii + 334.
Child SLA study is undoubtedly less researched than bilingualism and adult
SLA, and this volume is welcomed for its contribution to our understanding of
younger language learners. There is a distinct bias in this volume toward a focus
on discourse and the social contexts of learning; however, it is unclear why the
subtitle should be “Child’s Play,” because there is only minor attention to play
as a learning environment and no overt consideration of the implication of this
phrase that language acquisition is easy for younger learners.
Qualitative glimpses into the learning contexts are provided by Fogle’s chap-
ter, which compares the facilitative conversations between a father and his two
adopted Russian children with those that occur in another adoptive family with
a more sink-or-swim attitude. Mitchell and Lee’s presentation of home language
and literacy events engaged in by three Korean children learning English with
support from their second language (L2) English-speaking mother and a fi rst
language (L1) English peer also shows the moment-by-moment characteristics
of the child’s SLA environment.
In contexts of more overt instruction, the picture is different and sometimes
more worrisome. Philp and Duchesne explore the language demanded of, and
used by, an Ethiopian 6-year-old in a classroom of Australian peers with whom
she must negotiate her roles and relationships. Cekaite explores a similar
Book Reviews
154
environment but with a focus on the pedagogical function of attempting to
initiate exchanges with the teacher. Oliver, Philp, and Mackey address the im-
pact of teacher guidance in task-based interaction on learners of different
ages. Van den Branden contributes the concerning picture of multiple missed
opportunities for learning in a Flemish classroom in which children remained
silent when they did not understand.
The chapter by Iwasaki purports to be a naturalistic study of a 7-year-old’s
Japanese verbal morphosyntax acquisition. However, the heavy focus-on-form
environment of the classroom, in which much of the Japanese exposure occurs,
suggests that it may be a combination of natural and instructed acquisition.
On the other hand, Kwon and Han’s exploration of transfer in the acquisition of
negative, plural, and possessive structures in a 3-year-old Korean learner of
English is clearly naturalistic and exposes the multidirectionality of transfer.
Reference to the transfer literature in early bilingualism research would have
made this study even stronger.
Dimroth’s study of the acquisition of untutored German by two Russian
learners, 8 and 14 years of age, puts the emphasis on the differences be-
tween younger and older child learners and argues for a multifaceted ap-
proach that includes neurobiology, motivation, cognitive development, and
prior linguistic knowledge and experience as sources of explanation. The
differences between younger and older learners is also clear in the studies of
adolescent learners in classrooms who seem able to profi t both from inci-
dental focus-on-form—at least in the short term, as shown by García Mayo
and Alcón Soler’s study of Spanish learners of English—and from explicit
instruction—as shown by White’s study of French and Catalan learners of
English.
Both Philp, Mackey, and Oliver in the introduction and Nicholas and Light-
bown in their chapter argue for child SLA as a distinct phase of language
learning. Nicholas and Lightbown argue that it extends from age 2, when they
claim children have understood Language with a capital L, to about age 7,
which they argue is a watershed of acquired skills and understanding of the
particular languages being learned. However, it is not clear what under-
standing Language means for these authors, and in the end it seems they say
little more than that child SLA is defi ned by being a child and by having al-
ready started learning a L1. In fact, it seems inappropriate to try to argue for
discrete periods of language learning, given the myriad linguistic and nonlin-
guistic developments taking place at the same time. Instead, a better under-
standing of the specifi c constellations of knowledge, capacities, and needs of
children across childhood and adolescence and how these constellations shift
and change over time is needed. Only in that way will the insights from
language acquisition at all ages, in all contexts, and with all abilities be brought
fruitfully together.
( Received 24 May 2009 )
Susan Foster-Cohen
The Champion Centre and University of Canterbury
New Zealand