The Social Turn in Second Language Acquisition

This book offers an extended crititque of one of the main theoretical approaches to second language acqisition--the input/interaction/output school--on the grounds that it does not take sociolinguistic considerations into account. This boils down to a social approach that complements the dominant cognitive approach. Block's approach, in essence, is to walk through the definitions of each part of the term "second language acquisition," which is more substantive than it sounds, to broaden future research in the field.

David Book is a Lecturer in the School of Culture, Language and Communication at the Institute of Education, University of London.