The PhD program in Second Language Studies at Michigan State University is designed to provide a firm foundation in the field of Second Language Acquisition and its application to current second language research and teaching.

The field of Second Language Acquisition is the study of the acquisition of a non-primary language. As such, the field addresses some of the following questions:

• How are second/foreign languages learned?
• How do learners create a new language system with only limited exposure to a second/foreign language?
• How do language learners learn? What do they not learn?
• Why do most learners not achieve the same degree of knowledge or proficiency in their second language as they do in their first language?
• Why do some learners appear to achieve native-like proficiency in a second language?
• What are the patterns of acquisition that are similar regardless of first language and second language?

The PhD program at MSU draws from a number of disciplines as students are trained to explore some of these and related questions.

• Senta Goertler has been elected to the CALICO Executive Board


• Paula Winke and Senta Goertler's article "Students' Computer Access and Literacy for CALL" won the CALICO Outstanding Article 2007-2008


• Charlene Polio assumes editorship of ARAL (Annual Review of Applied Linguistics)


• Shawn Loewen has been elected to the AILA Executive Board as Member-at-Large of AILA.  Susan Gass remains on the Board as Past President.


• Ching-Ni Hsieh, Ben White, Soo Hyun Kim, Sara Hillman, Fei Fei and Shaofeng Li have been awarded Graduate School Summer Fellowships.
  


• Sara Hillman has been awarded an Interdisciplinary Inquiry and Teaching (IIT) fellowship