This State of the Art paper reviews a number of issues that define the scope of current Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research and then identifies areas of research that can contribute to a theory of "instructed" SLA, and effective second language teaching (SLT) pedagogy based in part on its findings. In this way I hope to promote interest in-- and provide readers with extensive references to -- the growing body of current SLA research that has relevance to the SLA/SLT interface. I also hope to promote interest in the content of a forthcoming conference, the 3rd Pacific Second Language Research Forum, to be held at Aoyama Gakuin University from March 26th to 29th, 1998, where many of these issues will be discussed by the leading researchers within and outside Japan.