As this issue was in preparation, the journal learned with great regret of the passing of John Trim. John was a long-serving member of the Language Teaching Board and his insight and advice proved invaluable for this and previous editors. An expert in the field of phonetics, linguistics, language didactics and policy, John worked tirelessly to improve the state of language teaching throughout his life. Among his key posts, he was director of the Council of Europe's Modern Languages Projects from 1971 to 1997 and supervised significant developments in language learning and teaching, including the Threshold Level and the Common European Framework of Reference.

As a tribute to the man and his work, we are publishing in this and a subsequent issue one of the last interviews John gave, where he looks back with his customary perspicacity at one of the most exciting periods of change in the teaching and learning of foreign languages.

The present review refers to studies published in 2002 in leading research journals. It focuses in particular on learning, teaching and policy in respect of second, modern foreign or additional languages. The comments offered about particular studies are not intended to summarise them (for that, it is best to refer to the actual abstracts which the present journal publishes). What is on offer is a personal selection made because some aspect of a particular article seemed to be of particular interest or to reflect an important trend, and I have attempted to link such elements together to form a narrative. Compared with previous years, two important themes seemed to gather particular momentum in 2002: first, the role of ‘frequency’ in acquisition; and second, the impact of complex and contradictory global factors on everyday pedagogical practice, thinking and attitudes. As in previous years reference is made to the abstracts. Thus, Tarone (2002: 03-158) refers to an article by Tarone published in 2002 and reflected in the 2003 series of this journal as abstract 158. In previous years I have discussed ICT (information and communications technology) in a separate section of its own but this has now been integrated into other sections, reflecting a process of ‘normalisation’.

A dedicated teacher, keen to try out new methods of teaching English and French and different ways of getting learners to talk. The teacher knows it is important to motivate the learners by bringing the real world and the target culture into the classroom and uses authentic newspaper articles on current events and takes the class out of the classroom to observe and discuss a phenomenon of physical geography which was mentioned in one of the reading texts. For three years this teacher keeps a diary of ideas for individual lessons, questions about materials and procedures as well as learner reactions and their learning difficulties and successes. Their language work is documented and analysed. As a result of these analyses, the teacher selects different procedures for further lessons, which are likewise analysed. Finally, the teacher publishes his observations, reflections and analyses for the benefit of other language teachers as well as academic discussion on language teaching methodology.

I started out as a budding English as a second language (ESL) teacher in 1976 at UCLA where I went through the M.A. TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) and Applied Linguistics Ph.D. programs. Sadly, those two programs were ‘disestablished’ in 2014, which provides a stark lesson to any departments that think they are hot stuff that nothing lasts forever. Nonetheless, my training in those programs provided me with an excellent start down three professional paths: second language testing, curriculum development, and research methods.

In his 2016 articles (Hyland, 2016a, 2016b), Ken Hyland makes a case for what he terms the ‘myth of linguistic injustice’, calling into question the assumption that ‘non-native’ users of English are at a linguistic disadvantage compared with their ‘native’ counterparts when writing for publication. In response, Flowerdew (2019) argues that Hyland is mistaken in categorically dismissing the extra challenges inherent in academic writing in an additional language, suggesting that while all academic writers may face a common set of challenges, ‘EAL [English as additional language] writers have an additional set of linguistic challenges, which do not apply (to such an extent) to L1 writers’ (p. 257). Here, we aim primarily to respond to Flowerdew yet, as his ideas are intrinsically intertwined with Hyland's initial claims, our article is unavoidably and necessarily a response to both writers and an attempt to contribute to the ongoing and wider discussion of native-speakerism and notions of speakerhood based on our own professional and personal experiences.

A professional journey is always part personal and mine is no exception. How does an individual from the Midwest of the United States get involved with language? It is something I have pondered for a long time along with the additional question of how that involvement translated into a profession. I hardly see it as a profession; rather, it was a life-long love of language that took me down a professional path.

Presented at the AAAL Annual Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, USA; 6 March, 2010.

This colloquium discussed a multilingual approach to language learning, language teaching and language assessment in school settings. This approach implies looking at language acquisition and use from a holistic perspective, taking into account not only the target language but all the languages known by the learner; such a perspective brings together the traditions of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and bi/multilingualism because it looks at the whole linguistic repertoire of learners when acquiring and using languages. This perspective does not regard the boundaries between languages as clear-cut; nevertheless, those boundaries are themselves used as a resource in communication. In contrast to traditional teaching approaches, code-mixing, code-switching and translanguaging are considered common practices in the behavior of multilingual learners. The multilingual approach also represents a reaction against the ‘monolingual bias’, which leads to the judging of multilingual speakers' competencies by native speaker norms. It also goes beyond common practices not only in foreign language classrooms but also in bilingual and multilingual schools.

University of Sheffield, UK; 9–10 July 2009

The seminar, organised by Jane Woodin, Gibson Ferguson, Valerie Hobbs and Lesley Walker (School of Modern Languages & Linguistics and School of English, University of Sheffield), aimed to bring together those working in intercultural communication (IC) pedagogy largely – though not exclusively – in the higher education sector. It drew inspiration from the growing number of courses with an intercultural element, from stand-alone modules and training courses to Master's degrees.

This review highlights recent doctoral research in English language education and related areas completed between 2007 and 2010 in three countries in Southeast Asia: Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines. Out of sixty dissertations initially chosen from major universities in these countries, five from the Philippines, four from Malaysia and three from Singapore were selected for review, the selection being based mainly on their quality of work and representation of key areas of intellectual work in the field in these countries. This review shows how the shared postcolonial identities of these countries and their unique sociohistorical locations help explain the coalescing and diverging agendas and trajectories in English language education doctoral research in the region. Much of the work affirms the dominant intellectual position of the West as the producer of knowledge, so there is a need to reposition the intellectual stance of research in English language education in the region within and emerging from its multilingual but unequally globalizing landscapes. Thus, there is an urgent need for more nuanced attention to socio-cultural factors that impact on English language education in the three countries under review, which, in turn, can help scholars produce new knowledge that can contribute to academic conversations in the field.

Since 2008, the Swedish government has launched occasional offers of funding for graduate schools aimed at practising teachers. The fundamental purpose of this initiative is to enhance quality in the Swedish school system by implementing what is stated in the Education Act, namely that education at all levels should be based upon scientific knowledge and evidence-based experience.