PROCESSING INSTRUCTION: THEORY, RESEARCH, AND COMMENTARY

Abstract

PROCESSING INSTRUCTION: THEORY, RESEARCH, AND COMMENTARY. Bill VanPatten (Ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2004. Pp. 360. $79.95 cloth.I have often been struck by how highly fluent second language (L2) speakers of English can make errors in, say, possessive determiner gender agreement (e.g., Chinese, French, or Russian speakers saying “his” instead of “her”) without being disturbed at all by what they have said. To me, as a first language speaker of English, the error is extremely jarring and can disrupt understanding. For the L2 speaker, the error has much less impact. By contrast, an error in lexical reference (e.g., saying “boy's” instead of “girl's”) is generally experienced as jarring and potentially disruptive, even by L2 speakers. Why, then, do L2 speakers perceive errors in linking grammatical form to meaning so differently than errors in linking lexical units to meaning? Does this difference pose a challenge for L2 instruction and, if so, how should the challenge be met?