Theoretical Perspectives on Speaking

Second language (SL) speaking has not been recognized as a research area as readily as have reading, writing, or listening. For instance, the 25th anniversary volume of TESOL Quarterly had papers on reading, writing, and listening, but apart from a paper on pronunciation, not a single one on speaking. This may be due to assumptions such as the following: 1) SLA studies in any case focus on oral language production (e.g., the morpheme acquisition studies in the 1970's, the input-interaction studies of the 1980's for which oral interaction was only a way of acquiring new target language items, and the task-based learning studies of the 1990's);