For a proper understanding of a book on the history of afield, three
things are relevant. First, information about the author’s background and
history in thefield to elucidate where in this case he comes from and what
has shaped his preferences and paradigms. The second is the motivation for
the time span covered and the third is a definition of the area studied.
I will briefly summarize my academic past and some publications that
were pivotal in my career. Myfirst contact with thefield of AL dates from
the mid 1970s, when I took a course with that title at the University of
Nijmegen. In 1977,five members of staff, Theo van Els, Theo Bongaerts,
AnneMieke Janssen-van Dieten, Charles van Os and Guus Extra, had pub-
lished theirHandboek voor de toegepaste taalkunde: Het leren en onderwijzen van
moderne vreemde talen[Handbook of Applied Linguistics: The Learning and
Teaching of Modern Foreign Languages]. An English version titledApplied
Linguistics and the Learning and Leaching of Foreign Languageswas published
in 1984 by Edward Arnold. In their book, the authors defined AL as“the
learning and teaching of foreign languages”. My development was further
shaped by a minor program on language psychology, offered by the Faculty
of Social Sciences, and partly taught by Willem (Pim) Levelt. Part of the
course was on Ulrich Neisser’s bookCognitive Psychology(1967), which made
a deep impression on me and sparked my interest in cognitive processing.
During those years I taught Dutch as a second language to adult migrants
with no qualification or training. After my graduation (Doktoraal, equivalent
to MA) in 1977 I got a position at the phonetics department in Nijmegen,
which led to my 1982 PhD thesis“Visuele feedback van intonatie”[“Visual
feedback of intonation”], which reports on a number of experiments on the
effectiveness of visualization of intonation contours in learning the pronunciation
of a foreign language.
In 1982, I was appointed as associate professor in the departments of
Dutch language and culture and applied linguistics. For the courses I taught I
used Clark and Clark’sPsychology and Language: An Introduction to Psycho-
linguistics(1977) and Hakuta’sMirror of Language: The Debate on Bilingualism
(1987). I was interested in how bilinguals process words in different lan-
guages and conducted experimental work on the bilingual lexicon.
The research that I did on language attrition with colleagues like Bert
Weltens and Marion Grendel was sparked by Lambert and Freed’sThe Loss
of Language Skillsfrom 1982.
In 1989, Levelt’sSpeaking: From Intention to Articulationwas published.
This book has been extremely important in my development. It inspired me
to work on bilingual processing models, which have kept my interest until
the present day.
In 1997, Diane Larsen-Freeman published her ground-breaking article on
complexity theory and language learning that became the beginning of a
completely new way of thinking. This marked one of the most significant
paradigmatic changes in my career. Inspired by Paul van Geert, professor of
developmental psychology at my university, my colleagues Wander Lowie,
2 Introduction