essence of the issue and he puts hisfingers on the sour point.”“Very influential
through his advisorship withOxford University Press.”
Widdowson, H. (1978) Teaching Language as Communication, Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Widdowson, H. (1984)Explorations in Applied Linguistics, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Nick Ellis
Nick Ellis works from a usage based perspective and concentrates on the
role of frequency in SLA and the role of implicit and explicit language
knowledge. He is one of the leading researchers working on emergentism in
language learning.
“He is provocative and rigorous and brings together data from a range of
fields and connects them elegantly.”“He brings a cognitive linguistics per-
spective to AL thatfills the gap with the decline of more formal linguistic
theories.”“He offers a plausible theory of SLA, and also does excellent
work in several other areas of AL.”
Ellis, N. (1996)“Sequencing in SLA”,Studies in Second Language Acquisition,
vol. 18, no. 1: 91–126.
Ellis, N. (2002)“Frequency effects in language processing”, Studies in
Second Language Acquisition, vol. 24, no. 2: 143–88.
Kees de Bot
Kees de Bot worked on a number of topics, including bilingual language
production, language attrition, language and aging and the application of
DST to language development and multilingualism.
“He introduced an L2 version of Levelt’s speaking model, something the
field was waiting for.”“More recently he has been influential in shifting the
study of SLA to complexity.”
De Bot, K. (1992)“A bilingual production model: Levelt’s speaking model
adapted”,Applied Linguistics, vol. 13, no. 1: 1–24.
De Bot, K., Lowie, W. and Verspoor, M. (2007)“A dynamic systems
Acquisition (SLA) 6.1.2 Theory construction and Second Language
Cognition, vol. 10, no. 1: 7–21.
Susan Gass
Susan Gass has published a number of books on research methodology and
SLA. She has done research on various topics, including input and interac-
tion, negotiation of meaning in native–non-native interaction and language
transfer.
“She is an amazingly productive researcher and author on SLA and
research methods.”“Her work on interaction has been hugely influential.”
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