We compared the acquisition of various dimensions of fluency by 28 students of French studying in three different learning contexts: formal language classrooms in an at home (AH) institution, an intensive summer immersion (IM) program, and a study abroad (SA) setting.

This study investigates the role of context of learning in second language (L2) acquisition. Participants were 40 native speakers of English studying Spanish for one semester in one of two different learning contexts-a formal classroom at a home university (AH) and a study abroad (SA) setting. The research looks at various indexes of oral performance gains-particularly gains in oral fluency as measured by temporal and hesitation phenomena and gains in oral proficiency based on the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI). The study also examines the relation these oral gains bore to L2-specific cognitive measures of speed of lexical access (word recognition), efficiency (automaticity) of lexical access, and speed and efficiency of attention control hypothesized to underlie oral performance. The learn-

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This study investigated the role of phonological memory (PM) in second language (L2) speech production by English-speaking adults who were learning Spanish. PM, operationalized as serial nonword recognition, and L2 lexical, narrative, and grammatical abilities from speech samples were assessed 13 weeks apart. After controlling for the amount of speech output, PM contributed significantly to the development of L2 narrative skills for less proficient participants (17.5% of variance explained) and to gains in correct use of function words for more proficient participants (15.7% of variance explained). These findings suggest that PM plays an important role in narrative development at earlier stages of L2 learning and in the acquisition of grammatical competence at later stages.

Thirty years ago, Dell Hymes~1972! observed that knowing what goes on outside the school setting is necessary to understanding what goes on inside+ He noted further that "the key to understanding language in context is to start not with language but with context + + + @and then to# systematically relate the two"~pp+ xix-lvii!+ Recently, the importance of learning context has stirred debate within SLA circles, and two coexisting lines of research have contributed to the overall picture that researchers and pedagogues have on SLA+ On the one hand, scholars such as Long~1997! contended that it is important to provide an understanding of the acquisition process in psycholinguistic terms relatively independent of external factors~e+g+, sociolinguistic variables or the particular methodology employed in a classroom!+ Researchers such as Firth and Wagner~1997! contended that the best predictive models of SLA consider the interaction of social activity and psycholinguistic elements+ Clearly, the differing views on the importance of external factors reflect the prolonged academic debate on the relative merits of essentialism-that is, the cognitive essence of the individual who observes the world objectively determines what he or she learns-and social constructivism-that is, knowledge is a social contract influenced by historic and cultural variables~Burr, 1995!+ Context of learning and the influence of external factors, in addition to their theoretical interest to SLA researchers, are also important to educators