The Editor and Board of Language Teaching are pleased to announce that the recipient of the 2008 Christopher Brumfit Thesis Award is Dr Andrea Borbély Hellman.

Innovation in English language education (ELE) has become a major ‘growth area’ in recent years. At the same time, an ELE innovation management literature has also developed, based on insights from innovation theory and their application, both from outside and within ELE, and concerned with attempting to critically evaluate and inform ELE innovation practice. Thus, using a well-established three-part framework for distinguishing the main stages involved in innovation project management, this review describes and discusses the main features of this body of work. After defining terms and clarifying its scope, it considers what is said about the innovation ‘initiation’ phase, in terms of innovation causes, characteristics and contexts. It then examines conceptualisations of the innovation ‘implementation’ stage, by distinguishing main overall approaches, frameworks for identifying and configuring roles, underlying psychological processes, and the use of evaluation techniques. Lastly, the literature relating to innovation ‘institutionalisation’ stage is analysed. The article concludes by identifying overall trends and areas for further development. In particular, it is argued that ELE innovation work needs to become more informed by many of the concepts and procedures which the ELE innovation management literature contains.

Second language acquisition (SLA) research informed by sociocultural theory (henceforth, SCT) began in earnest with the publication of Frawley & Lantolf's (1985) article on L2 (second language) discourse (described in the timeline proper). Since then, well over 300 journal articles, book chapters and doctoral dissertations have appeared in the research literature. Although the term ‘sociocultural’ is often applied to a wide array of approaches to research that seeks to understand what it means to be a human being, in the present timeline, we restrict its interpretation to refer to the specific theory of psychological development proposed by Vygotsky (1986). Other approaches that have appropriated the term, such as those emanating from the writings of Bakhtin (1981), while compatible in many respects with Vygotskian theory, have a different focus and are not strictly speaking psychological or psycholinguistic theories. To be sure, Vygotsky rarely used the term ‘sociocultural’, preferring instead ‘cultural psychology’ or ‘cultural-historical psychology’ to refer to his theory. Wertsch (1985) is generally credited with having coined the term ‘sociocultural’ as a way of capturing the notion that human mental functioning results from participation in, and appropriation of, the forms of cultural mediation integrated into social activities.

One of the most salient aspects of speech is accent – either dialectal differences attributable to region or class, or phonological variations resulting from L1 influence on the L2. Our primary concern is with the latter, because of the strong social, psychological, and communicative consequences of speaking with an L2 accent. The decline of audiolingualism led to a concomitant marginalization of pronunciation research and teaching. It was believed that pronunciation instruction could not be effective, in part because of the unrealistic goal of native-like speech in L2 learners, and also because of research findings that suggested that instruction had a negligible impact on oral production. The recent revival of interest in pronunciation research has brought a change of focus away from native-like models toward easy intelligibility. The effects of this change have yet to be fully realized in L2 classrooms. However, many L2 students themselves are keenly interested in pronunciation instruction, a fact not lost on individuals who have recognized a lucrative marketing niche in ‘accent reduction/elimination’ programs that may do more harm than good. Our presentation will relate the core issues of intelligibility, identity, social evaluation, and discrimination to appropriate pronunciation pedagogy for L2 learners.

Assessment has long been beset by a dichotomy between what Lynch (2003: 4) termed the positivist and interpretivist orientations. The former views assessment as a technical exercise involving the quantification of learners' knowledge or cognitive abilities; the latter considers assessment as the humanistic endeavor of portraying learners' qualitative development and subjective experiences. This presentation argues that, although these distinctions may be useful heuristics, differing types of assessments are more profitably viewed as filling particular niches within an ecosystem. The speech also reports on technical developments that place control over assessment results in the hands of learners, which allows them to assemble evidence from a variety of sources to substantiate proficiency claims. These developments should help promote the paradigm of assessment as ecology and help the field move beyond the uneasy dichotomy that now predominates.

Teachers' competence to estimate the effectiveness of learning materials is important and often neglected in programmes for teacher education. In this lecture I will try to explore the possibilities of designing scaffolding instruments for a priori assessment of language learning tasks, based on insights from SLA and cognitive psychology, more specifically connectionist theory. I will subsequently outline the development and evaluation of a ‘yardstick’ to judge complex, integrated, life-like tasks, such as WebQuests. The possibilities will be explored of performing in-depth a priori task analyses as a learning task for teachers in order to enhance their competence in making ‘educated guesses’ about task effectiveness. Finally, an experiment will be described to determine the reliability and validity of an instrument for in-depth analysis of language learning tasks based on the theoretical framework previously described.

The School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies (LALS) at Victoria University of Wellington conducts research and teaching in Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, Writing and Deaf Studies. It incorporates a Deaf Studies Research Unit, which undertakes research on topics relating to deaf people and their language in New Zealand, and the New Zealand Dictionary Centre, set up in partnership with Oxford University Press, which provides a base for research into New Zealand lexicography and aspects of language in New Zealand. It also incorporates an English Language Institute, which specialises in teaching English language courses and teacher education programmes. A particular strength of the School's makeup is the opportunity to engage in research which benefits and is benefited by both theoretical and practical approaches to issues in linguistics and applied linguistics. This report describes one of a number of examples of the productive integration of language teaching and language research at LALS. We describe an ongoing research project that has developed organically over the past twelve years. The research involved first collecting and analysing authentic workplace interaction between native speakers, and then making use of it in explicit instruction aimed at developing socio-pragmatic proficiency in the workplace among skilled migrants with English as an Additional Language (EAL). We are now engaged in evaluating the results of the instruction, not only in the classroom, but also in workplaces where the migrants have been placed as interns.

The Modern Language Centre addresses a broad spectrum of theoretical and practical issues related to second and minority language teaching and learning. Since its foundation in 1968, the quality and range of the Centre's graduate studies programs, research, and development projects and field and dissemination services have brought it both national and international recognition. Our work focuses on curriculum, instruction, and policies for education in second, foreign, and minority languages, particularly in reference to English and French in Canada but also other languages and settings – including studies of language learning, methodology and organization of classroom instruction, language education policies, student and program evaluation, teacher development, as well as issues related to bilingualism, multilingualism, cultural diversity, and literacy. In this research report, we will present research activities underway in the Centre in the areas of pedagogy, literacy development, sociocultural theory, pragmatics, and assessment.

The Second Language Studies (SLS) Program was established in 2005 with the express purpose of providing ‘a firm foundation in the field of Second Language Acquisition and its application to current second language research and teaching’ (http://sls.msu.edu). Under the leadership of Professor Susan Gass, the program has grown to include 12 core faculty members and 27 Ph.D. students. As an interdisciplinary program, linkages across the university exist with the Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African Languages; the Department of French, Classics, and Italian; the Department of Spanish and Portuguese; the Arabic Language Instruction Flagship; the M.A. TESOL Program; the Center for Language Education and Research; the English Language Center; the Center for the Support of Language Teaching; the Department of Psychology; and the College of Education.

The Editor, Publishers, and Board of Language Teaching would like to thank the following readers who have generously assisted with their time and expertise reviewing manuscripts in the preparation of volume 42. Reviewers are absolutely critical to the functioning of any peer reviewed journal, and we are very much in their debt.