Classroom Foreign Language Learning and Language Variation

Abstract

There is a growing recognition among researchers and observers of second-language learning that the foreign language classroom constitutes a special environment for the learning and the communicative use of the target language. In a special issue of Studies in Second Language Acquisition devoted to that topic, several of the contributors underscore both the complexity and the specificity of the foreign language classroom (Edmonson, 1985; Faerch & Kasper, 1985; Kramsch, 1985). Edmonson neatly characterizes the special nature of the foreign language classroom environment by underscoring the paradoxical nature of the language behavior we wish to impart to learners: “we seek in the classroom to teach people how to talk when they are not being taught” (1985, p. 162).