The Psychology of Second-Language Learning: A Declaration of Independence.

traditional mind set: 1) review literature that could legitimately fall under the rubric "psychology of second-language teaching"; 2) identify where we are now in developing that knowledge; and 3) project into the future-especially endorsing some promising new avenue that will notably improve our knowledge base. It quickly became clear, however, that this approach was doomed to frustrate any circumspect reviewer. First, the quality of our disconcertingly small corpus of research must make any researcher uncomfortable. Flawed methodology, inexplicably contradictory results, ubiquitous lacunae, and conspicuously over-extended extrapolation inevitably create misgivings about the validity of our knowledge. It became clear that in many ways our professional literature is becoming overly represented with reviews of reviews. Periodic reviews, from Carroll to Izzo have provided competent analyses of research on factors that may influence second-language learning.' Izzo recently examined research on psychological factors such as intelligence, language aptitude, attitudes, motivation, personality traits, age, socioeconomic status, sex, teaching method, teacher, time, and setting. The pessimistic-and therefore frustrating conclusion that one must draw from this review, as well as from previous reviews, has to be that, by and large, we do not understand a great deal about the second-language teaching-learning process. A bias-free evaluation of nearly any classroom anywhere would unfortunately lead to a similar conclusion.