Michael Sharwood Smith is Emeritus Professor at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh and Honorary Professorial Fellow at Edinburgh University. He is also the founding editor of the journal Second Language Research. John Truscott is a Professor at the National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan, and has extensive experience teaching English as a foreign language, along with classes in linguistics, psychology and language teaching.

• 1. Introduction; Part I. The Framework: 2. The language module: architecture and representations; 3. Processing in the language module; 4. Growth of the language module: acquisition by processing; 5. Beyond the language module; Part II. Applying the Framework: 6. The bilingual mind introduced; 7. The growth of a second language; 8. Consciousness and attention; 9. The role of consciousness in language growth; 10. Issues in SLA revisited; 11. Conclusion; References.

'An immensely interesting treatment of the bilingual mind, full of important ideas about the cognitive systems that support the acquisition and use of language.' William O'Grady, University of Hawaii, Manoa