Conclusion

The aim of this edited volume is to pay tribute to Professor Merrill Swain, honoring her scholarly contributions to the field of applied linguistics – particularly in the area of immersion education and second language acquisition (SLA). More specifically, it explores how her scholarship has helped advance our understanding of the processes involved in second language (L2) learning and teaching and how others have built on her scholarship to conduct their own research. The volume addresses a number of key constructs proposed and developed by Swain and her colleagues, including the output hypothesis, the importance of meta-talk, languaging and collaborative dialogue. In this concluding section, we provide a brief overview of key threads of discussion in this volume, as they relate to Swain’s legacy.