In the past several years the subfield of sociolinguistics known as language and gender has developed a sophistication that could not have been predicted from the research of the early 1970s. While this area of study has evolved along many of the same lines as other branches of sociolinguistics, the lessons of language and gender research have informed the wider field by producing an awareness of the subtlety of such categories as sex and gender (along with class and ethnicity); it has forced a reevaluation of these categories, once assumed to correlate in a straightforward fashion with language variation.

Media language has always attracted the attention of linguists, particularly applied linguists and sociolinguists. There are four practical and principled reasons for this interest. First, the media provide an easily accessible source of language data for research and teaching purposes. Second, the media are important linguistic institutions. Their output makes up a large proportion of the language that people hear and read every day. Media usage reflects and shapes both language use and attitudes in a speech community. For second language learners, the media may function as the primary—or even the sole—source of native-speaker models. Third, the ways in which the media use language are interesting linguistically in their own right; these include how different dialects and languages are used in advertising, how tabloid newspapers use language in a projection of their assumed readers' speech, or how radio personalities use language—and only language–to construct their own images and their relationships to an unseen, unknown audience. Fourth, the media are important social institutions. They are crucial presenters of culture, politics, and social life, shaping as well as reflecting how these are formed and expressed. Media ‘discourse’ is important both for what it reveals about a society and for what it contributes to the character of society.

With increasing frequency, the distinction between “translation” (written product) and “interpretation” (oral product) is being recognized by those outside the profession. Interpreters especially are heartened when they see “Voice of Interpreter” flash on the screen during a newscast instead of “Voice of Translator.” Many scholars and practitioners (the terms are not mutually exclusive), however, choose the generic “translation” to include both oral and written product, some referring more specifically to “interpretation” as “oral translation” and to “simultaneous interpretation” as “simultaneous translation.”

The relationship between phonetics, phonology, and applied linguistics continues to be a paradoxical one. On the one hand, these fields of linguistics lend themselves more readily to applicationthan others since they deal with something more tangible and material than morphology, syntax, semantics, or historical research. On the other hand, there is something esoteric in phonetics and phonology: The objects they handle–sounds, articulatory features, acoustic spectra, stress degrees or melodies–are more elusive and hard to observe for the non-specialist than, say, suffixes, word order, or even meanings. Their terminology is rich and often forbidding, and they may sometimes seem to insist on pedantic distinctions or irrelevant detail (Dieling 1992). The validity of the phonetics–phonology dichotomy itself may be questioned when it comes to their application; however, the two fields continue to develop separately and grow further apart. Thus the application of the “sound sciences”, phonetics and phonology, is partly more advanced and partly more rudimentary than that of other linguistic branches. The purpose of the present survey is to demonstrate the importance of phonology and its applications in TEFL. To do so, this survey will examine current development in both phonetics and phonology, and then suggest implications for instructional contexts.

Regardless of one's gastronomic persuasion, the point of the questions above have nothing to do with food; rather, they have to do with language. Even if a person speaks no German, French or Italian, words like wienerschnitzel, vinaigrette, and cappucino are very likely part of his or her vocabulary, the result of contact between speakers of English and those of other languages, leading to the introduction of foreign words into English. Although this little culinary example is not by itself significant, it does represent a phenomenon that is extremely widespread throughout the world, since contact between speakers of different languages is the rule rather than the exception. Thus, language contact and its consequences constitute a very rich area of linguistic inquiry.

A defining moment in the history of generative research on language acquisition was the advent of the Principles and Parameters (P&P) approach (Chomsky 1981). Generative research on second-language (L2) acquisition was no different in this regard, but there was a distinct twist: The L2 research agenda has also often been informed by the possibility that the L2 learner may not have “access” to the innate linguistic endowment described by Chomsky and others (Bley-Vroman 1990, Clahsen and Muysken 1986). It was thus perhaps inevitable that one might find a volume like Point Counterpoint (Eubank 1991), in which researchers with generally opposing viewpoints addressed this possibility. However, while the issue will likely be examined again in future volumes, an appraisal of more recent L2 research suggests that the “access” question no longer dominates the L2 research agenda. Instead, more recent work suggests an agenda in which “access” to UG is presupposed. The purpose of this review is thus not only to review research on the L2 “access” thesis from the 1980s and 1990s, but, more importantly, to provide an overview of more recent L2 research that is not fundamentally constrained by this issue.

Although the sociocultural theory (henceforth SCT) of mental activity, rooted in the work of L. S. Vygotsky and his colleagues, has certainly come to the fore in developmental and educational research (cf. Forman, et al. 1993, Lave and Wenger 1991, Moll 1990, Newman, et al. 1989), it is still very much the “new kid on the block” as far as SLA research is concerned. Recently, however, SCT has begun to enjoy increased attention among L2 researchers, as is amply attested in the bibliography of this paper. This research has focused on three general areas: activity theory and the relevance of motives and goals for L2 learning; the role of private speech in L2 learning; and learning in the zone of proximal development. These areas serve as the organizing basis for the survey that follows. The overview begins, however, with a brief, but necessary, overview of the theory itself.

The literature on crosslinguistic influence (Sharwood Smith and Kellerman 1986) or transfer, as it has been traditionally called, is by now quite extensive, as befits a topic which has been wreathed in controversy ever since the fledgling days of second language acquisition (SLA). Perhaps few other research interests have been so affected by shifts of paradigm or fashion; yet whether we consider its importance primary or peripheral, an understanding of the part played by knowledge of one's first or other languages in the acquisition of a second remains an essential goal of SLA theory.

Compared to research on language acquisition, research on the maintenance and loss of language skills is a relatively recent development. There is, of course, a longstanding sociolinguistic tradition of research on language shift, but work in the field of attrition really started in the US in the late 1970s (Lambert and Freed 1982). Since then, research on language attrition has grown rapidly in different countries, as is witnessed by special issues devoted to the topic in the journals Applied Psycholinguistics in 1986, ITL-Review of Applied Linguistics in 1989 and Studies in Second Language Acquisition in 1989, as well as by three recent volumes: Weltens, de Bot and van Els (1986), Weltens (1989), and Seliger and Vago (1991).

In many ways, the year 1990 represented a watershed in language testing. In that year, the 12th annual Language Testing Research Colloquium took as its theme “A new decade of language testing research: Collaboration and cooperation.” The 1990 Colloquium was also dedicated to the memory of Michael Canale, whose work during the previous decade laid the groundwork for much of that of the 1990s. In 1990, a seminar sponsored by the Regional Language Centre in Singapore, on Language Testing and Programme Evaluation, focused on many of the problems in the field of language testing that militated against the hoped for progress of the 1980s. At both of these meetings, and at others involving language testing that year, discussions were held concerning the formation of an international professional association of language testers. The result was the formation of the International Language Testing Association in 1992. Also in 1990, a language testing computer “bulletin board,” LTEST-L, was established on Listserv, so that the international community of language testing researchers and practitioners could hold electronic “conferences” and share information and data on a world-wide basis. Finally, a number of important books on language testing were published in 1990, including works by Bachman, Davies, Heaton, and Weir, which have already had an influence on language testing research and development in the first half of the decade.

In the past two decades, there has been a major shift in language testing towards the development and use of performance tests. The basis for this shift is the expectation that such tests would assess a more valid construct of what it really means to know a language. The purpose of this chapter is to review th topic of performance testing by focusing on its definitions, theory, development, and research. The chapter will begin with a review of the different definitions of performance testing and provide examples of the types of performance tests that have been developed and used. The chapter will then examine the extent to which performance tests have drawn upon the theoretical discussions of competence and performance. The next section will describe the research that has been carried out on performance tests. The chapter will end with an agenda for development and research on the manyu unanswered questions concerning performance testing.

Current trends in assessment, no longer based on the view that language learning entails a passive accumulation of skills, have led to the increasingly more common use of assessment procedures that differ quite drastically from standardized norm-referenced measures of language proficiency (Calfee and Hiebert 1991, Calfee and Perfumo 1993, Gifford and O'Connor 1991). Increasing criticism of standardized tests, especially in light of current educational reform movements, has also brought into question the value of other indirect approaches to assessment (Clay 1990, Cohen 1994, Damico 1992, Haladyana 1992, Oller 1992, Pikulski 1990, Worthen 1993). Additionally, interest groups representing both linguistically and culturally diverse students and students with special education needs have called for a change in our approaches to assessment. The goal is to ensure equity in educational opportunities and to strive toward educational excellence for all students (Council of Chief State School Officers 1992, Fradd, McGee and Wilen 1994, Hamayan and Damico 1991, LaCelle-Peterson and Rivera 1994). Although some researchers suggest that it is false to assume that alternative assessment approaches automatically ensure equity for diverse populations (Darling-Hammond 1994), these approaches nonetheless provide a wealth of information which must minimally serve as a context for a more valid interpretation of all standardized test results. In a more central capacity, information from these alternative assessment procedures can constitute the sole basis for much educational and instructional decision-making (Damico 1992).

In referring to evaluation, this chapter is not describing the testing that is done in language programs. As Alderson put it, “evaluation is the process of seeking to establish the value of something for some purpose, a test is an instrument for gauging learning outcomes” (1986:5, emphasis added). The use of the word testing will refer only to the instruments. The term evaluation will be used to include all of the instruments and processes involved in gathering information to make judgements about the value of an educational program. More precisely, language program evaluation will be understood as the systematic collection and analysis of information necessary to improve a curriculum, assess its effectiveness and efficiency, and determine participants' attitudes within the context of a particular institution (Brown 1989; 1995).