This two-volume collection brings together papers first presented at the AILA Congress in 1987. In volume one, the over-all focus is on the individual language learner and how that individual develops a command of a language (first or second) in home and classroom settings.

1. Contributors; 2. Foreword; 3. An Overview of Applied Linguistics (by Tucker, G. Richard); 4. Interaction: The Key to Communication (by Rivers, Wilga M.); 5. Part I: Learning Language; 6. Introduction; 7. Learning the Language and Learning through Language in Early Childhood (by Oldenburg, Jane); 8. Conversational Exchange between a 5- to 6-Year-Old and the Mother in a Playroom Situation (by Comeau, Judith); 9. The Role of Transfer in Simultaneous Languagae Acquisition (by Kwan-Terry, Anna); 10. A Sociolinguistic Study of Everyday Talk between Mothers and Children (by Hasan, Ruqaiya); 11. Are Mothers Really the Main Mediators of Language? (by Dopke, Susanne); 12. "Artificial" Bilingualism: Must it Fail? (by Saunders, George); 13. The "Bilingual" Child as Interlanguage Hearer: Implications for Migrant Education (by Rado, Marta); 14. Acquiring a Sense of the Story Genre: An Examination of Semantic Properties (by Pappas, Christine C.); 15. Cohesive Ties in Written Narratives: A Developmental Study with Beginning Writers (by Yde, Philip); 16. Metalinguistic Activities and the Development of the Use of Formal Register Among Elementary School Children (by Ostiguy, Luc); 17. Learning to Read in a Second Language: A Window on the Language Acquisition Process (by Wallace, Catherine); 18. The Development of genre in the Writing of Two Adolescent Lebanese Students of English as a Second Language (by Elliott, Marietta); 19. Oral and Written Language in the Educational Context (by Hammond, Jennifer); 20. Implications of Learnability Theories for Second Language Learning and Teaching (by White, Lydia); 21. On the Acquisition of Word Order Rules in Swedish as a Second Language (by Bolander, Maria); 22. A Crossover Effect in Interlanguage: Learners' Use of English Predicate Complement Constructions (by Borland, Helen); 23. A Comparison of Performance on Chinese and English Dichotic Listening Tasks by Billingual Native Mandarin Speakers (by Thomas, Lee); 24. The Language of Neurolinguistics: Principles and Perspectives in the Application of Linguistic Theory to the Neuropsychology of Language (by McKellar, Gordon Bruce); 25. Orthographic Complexity and Orthography Acquisition (by Luelsdorff, Philip A.); 26. "Process" vs. "Product" or Down with the Opposition! (by Moore, Helen); 27. Towards an Alternative Curriculum for Acquisition-Poor Environments (by Tickoo, Makhan Lal); 28. Interactive Discourse in the L2 Classroom (by DiPietro, Robert J.); 29. The Notion of Synchrony in Second Language Learning (by Gassin, June); 30. Towards Discourse-Sensitive Cloze Procedures: The Role of Lexis (by Carter, Ronald); 31. The Analysis of Sales Encounters on the Island of St. Croix: An Ethnographic Approach (by Geigel, Alma Simounet de); 32. Linguistic Difficulties in Institutional Discourse (by Ventola, Eija)