In keeping with its mission to develop insights into processes of L2 acquisition and to use that knowledge to inform language teaching, the Center for Language Acquisition at The Pennsylvania State University is pleased to announce a new webinar series: Foundational Dialogues in Second Language Studies. Featuring distinguished scholars, the series considers key questions pertaining to processes of second language acquisition, the role of instruction, the state of knowledge in the field, and how we may move forward, among other important topics. The aim of the series is that by bringing together scholars with distinct perspectives to examine and interrogate a particular topic from different angles, new insights may emerge as well as new possibilities for future studies and collaborations.

The first Dialogue will feature Robert DeKeyser (Professor Emeritus, University of Maryland) and Shawn Loewen (Professor, Michigan State University) as they engage with the topic Basic Research and Classroom Research: Applying Findings.

Biographies

Robert DeKeyser is originally from the Flemish part of Belgium. He received a Ph.D. in education with a minor in linguistics from Stanford University, taught at the University of Pittsburgh for seventeen years, and at the University of Maryland, College Park for fourteen years. His research interests concern various aspects of language teaching and learning, but especially classroom foreign language learning, language learning during education abroad, age effects on language learning, other individual differences in language learning, and the interaction between age, aptitude, and teaching contexts/ methodologies. Most of his work draws heavily on psychological theory about implicit/explicit learning, skill acquisition theory, automatization processes, and age differences. He has conducted research on the acquisition of French, Spanish, English, and artificial languages by native speakers of Dutch, English, Hungarian, Russian, and other languages, in the laboratory, the classroom, education abroad programs, and immigrant communities. He has published in a variety of journals such as Applied Linguistics, Applied Psycholinguistics, Language Learning, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, The Modern Language Journal, and the TESOL Quarterly. He published an edited book on practice activities in second language learning with Cambridge University Press and a co-edited book on applied linguistics classroom research with Benjamins. From 2005 to 2010 he was editor of Language Learning, and from 2013 to 2017 he served as associate editor of Bilingualism: Language and Cognition.

Shawn Loewen is professor in applied linguistics at Michigan State University, where he serves as director of the Second Language Studies doctoral program. His research interests include instructed second language acquisition (ISLA), classroom interaction, technology and ISLA generally, and mobile-assisted language learning specifically. Recent publications, in addition to multiple journal articles (e.g., Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Language Learning, ELT Journal, System, and Language Teaching Research) include The Routledge Handbook of Instructed Second Language Acquisition (2017, edited with Sato) and a 2024 co-authored textbook entitled, A Practical Guide to Second Language Teaching and Learning (with Sato), which won the 2025 PROSE award in Languages and Linguistics from the Association of American Publishers. The third edition of his book, Introduction to Instructed Second Language Acquisition appeared in 2025, as did the co-edited volume Technology and Instructed Second Language Acquisition published by John Benjamins Publishing. He served as the associate editor of The Modern Language Journal from 2017 to 2025.