A Philosophy of Second Language Acquisition On the Origin of Species For the first time ever Rebecca Serle For the first time ever Sixteen year old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games She shows that most models of SLA are linear in nature and subscribe to the conduit metaphor of knowledge transfer: the speaker encodes a message Marysia Johnson proposes a new model of second language acquisition (SLA)—a model that shifts the focus from language competence (the ability to pass a language exam) to language performance (using language competently in real life contexts)