ABSTRACT
This chapter, and three chapters that follow, will investigate issues related to the acquisition of the specifi c linguistic areas of grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and pragmatics. The previous chapters have referred to these various aspects of language in large part because the topics of L2 knowledge, interaction, and focus on form are not limited to any one linguistic area. Many of the issues in those chapters are relevant to ISLA in general, although it must be acknowledged that grammar has been a primary focus throughout SLA research (Nassaji & Fotos, 2011; Ur, 2011). The following chapters, however, will concentrate on the acquisitional challenges unique to each aspect of language, specifi cally taking into account more explicit learning and instructional perspectives. The current chapter will consider more explicit approaches to the acquisition of grammar, focusing on theoretical and empirical perspectives that support various methods of grammar instruction.
