Recasts have figured prominently in recent SLA research, with studies documenting significant advantages for learners exposed to this type of negative feedback. Although some researchers have suggested that such findings imply a beneficial role for negative evidence (i.e., information regarding the impossibility of certain utterances in the language being learned), the source of these benefits has not been explored directly, as multiple variables are conflated in recasts. Specifically, recasts not only offer implicit negative evidence, but they also provide positive evidence. Moreover, recasts are believed to make this positive evidence especially salient. In the present study, 74 learners of L2 Spanish engaged in communicative interaction with the researcher in one of the following conditions: (a) recasts (i.e., negative evidence and enhanced salience of positive evidence), (b) negative evidence, (c) enhanced salience of positive evidence, and (d) unenhanced positive evidence (control). Only the recast and enhanced-salience groups performed significantly better than the control group on posttreatment measures, which suggests that the utility of recasts is derived at least in part from enhanced salience of positive evidence and that the implicit negative evidence they seem to provide may not be a crucial factor. I am grateful to Alison Mackey and Kim McDonough for their insightful suggestions on this paper and the research on which it is based. I also thank Ronald P. Leow, Cristina Sanz, Cathy Doughty, and RuSan Chen for their thoughtful comments on that research, Ana María Nuevo for her assistance with data collection and coding, the anonymous SSLA reviewers for their valuable suggestions, and the participants in the study for their time and cooperation. Of course, I alone am responsible for all errors.

Given the documented benefits of participation in communicative interaction (e.g., Gass & varonis, 1994; Mackey, 1999), the present study investigated the effects of interlocutor type on the provision and incorporation of feedback in task–based interaction. The interactions of 48 dyads, evenly divided among adults and children, and native speaker–nonnative speaker and nonnative speaker–native speaker, were analyzed to assess the effect of interlocutor on (1) amount of feedback, (2) opportunities for modified output, and (3) immediate incorporation of feedback. In all dyed types, at least 30% of errors resulted in feedback, much of which led to modified output. Analyses also revealed significant differences for amount, nature, and response to feedback according to dyad type.

This article addresses Spanish for native speakers (SNS) instruction from the perspective of critical pedagogy, including the critical examination of dominant educational paradigms as well as the proposal of alternative models. Emphasizing the inherently political nature of education and the role of language in the production of knowledge, culture, and identities, the author analyzes current models of SNS and argues that appropriateness‐based models designed to promote expansion of students' linguistic repertoires may reinforce dominant sociolinguistic hierarchies and deny student agency. An emerging critical approach is considered, and a proposal that emphasizes the political—as well as the formal and social—aspects of language, and the promotion of student agency is presented. Specific suggestions for the implementation of the proposed approach are provided.

In Washington DC's newly gentrified Chinatown, recent commercial establishments, primarily non-Chinese owned chains, use Chinese-language signs as design features targeted towards people who neither read nor have ethnic ties to Chinese. Using this neighborhood as a case study, we advocate a contextualized, historicized and spatialized perspective on linguistic landscape which highlights that landscapes are not simply physical spaces but are instead ideologically charged constructions. Drawing from cultural geography and urban studies, we analyze how written language interacts with other features of the built environment to construct commodified urban places. Taking a contextually informed, qualitative approach, we link microlevel analysis of individual Chinese-language signs to the specific local sociogeographic processes of spatial commodification. Such a qualitative approach to linguistic landscape, which emphasizes the importance of sociohistorical context, and which includes analysis of signage use, function, and history, leads to a greater understanding of the larger sociopolitical meanings of linguistic landscapes.