Since World War II, the political order that divided the world into nationstates has been remarkably stable. The balance of terror during the Cold War prevented major changes in the world system. With minor exceptions, such as the emergence of Singapore as an independent polity shortly after the foundation of Malaysia and the breakup of highly artificial geographically divided Pakistan into two separate states, even most of the countries that had come into existence as the result of decolonization did not change their borders. However, while the bi-polar system of the political and military stand-off of the two superpowers continued, a triangular world system developed on the economic plane. During the 1970s Japan became a major economic force, while the integration of the European Economic Community continued. Since the end of World War II, the United States has had close economic ties with both of the economic powers.

The scope of this brief review, and of the bibliographies which follow, has been restricted to England itself, and includes only passing reference to the Celtic languages in general (Durkacz 1983, Price 1984, Trudgill 1984), or to Scottish Gaelic and Welsh in particular (McKinnon 1977, Murray and Morrison 1984, Price and Dodson 1978). The decision to limit the scope in this way was made essentially because of the very extensive existing literature on the sociolinguistic situation of the Celtic languages in Britain, and on related educational questions. It also seemed more useful at the present time to use the limited space available to focus on the much less explored field of bilingualism and educational debate about bilingualism in England itself.

I want to go beyond the narrower definition of applied linguistics as the application of theoretical linguistics to the acquisition of second, third, and fourth languages, to the broader notion proposed by Trudgill as "the application of linguistic research to the solution of practical, educational and social problems of all types" (Trudgill 1984:1, see also Kaplan 1980).

The past decade in language curriculum in Australia has been a time of exploration and innovation, and also a time of consolidation. During this period, curriculum planning reflected, first, a swing within the teaching profession to greater teacher responsibility in curriculum (a responsive curriculum), then a swing back to teacher accountability (an explicit curriculum) due to demands external to the teaching profession. In addition, language curriculum in Australia was strongly influenced by communicative language teaching theory (CLT) and the related developments of task-based learning (TBL), needs-based programming, and language as discourse theory.

Adult education, of which literacy is a central component, is considered as a critical factor in personal and national development (UNESCO 1972:13–16). West African nations, like most other african states, have been aware of the importance of adult education in development in general and in literacy education in particular for several decades now. This awareness is reflected in the articulation of educational and social welfare objectives set up by various governments since the advent of political independence in the late 1950s. For example, the Convention People's Party of the late Dr. Nkwame Nkrumah, former President of Ghana, included in its election manifesto in 1951 a pledge to eradicate illiteracy in the country. A resolution to this effect was adopted by the National Assembly in August of that year (Oyedeji, Omolewa, and Asiedu 1982:12). A similar pledge was expressed, and it formed the core around which long-range educational objectives were articulated by the first conference of Ministers of Education of African States held at Addis Ababa in May 1961.

This is an overview of studies concerning the linguistic situation of Eastern Africa in reference to the inter-relationships among the various Languages and their extent, as well as to both official and informal patterns of usage. The three which make up what is traditionally called East Africa--Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda--receive more detailed attention.

The major local (Austronesian) languages of the Philippines are Cebuano, Tagalog (the basis of pilipino), Ilocano, Hiligaynon, Bicol, Waray (Samber-Leyte), Kapampangan, and Pangasinan (rank ordered according to the number of first-language speakers). Earlier, any language which had at least 500,000 first-language speakers was considered a major language; with the growth in population, this number has been pushed to 1,000,000. All but Pangasinan, which has about 950,000 first-language speakers, have over a million first-language speakers based on the 1975 census. (A census was taken in 1980 and preliminary reports have been released; however, a breakdown according to language speakers is not yet available.)

Computers have become much more widely used in translation since the early 1980s but in unexpected ways. From the beginnings of machine translation research in the 1950s until recently, it was expected that computers would be in direct competition with human translators for the same work. Instead, it has turned out that most translation done by computers fills latent needs that do not reduce the amount of work available to professional translators. Computers have also turned out to be useful as productivity tools for human translators who still perform the central translation task. Today, the relationship between computers and human translators is often seen as synergistic rather than competitive.

Numerous people have helped shape each issue of the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, but there is always one person who has been particularly generous in sharing his or her time and expertise. For this issue, I would like to thank Merrill Swain for her Skype calls about the issue and for, as always, her amazing breadth of knowledge. She not only knows about research in every area of applied linguistics but also, it seems, in every corner of the world. She contributed greatly to not only this, but every issue during my tenure as editor. As this is my last issue, I would like to thank the other editorial directors as well.

The major theoretical challenge for the sociology of language consists of the extent that it contributes to and, indeed, benefits from the sciences of society, on the one hand, and the sciences of language, on the other. Considering that the total enterprise only came into being in the early 70s (taking The SSRC's Summer Institute on Sociolinguistics at Indiana University, 1964, as a reasonable date of departure) some progress toward meeting this challenge is undeniable. Such progress is particularly great at the micro-level where variation theory, discourse analysis, speech act theory, pragmatics, and ethnomethodological concerns and sensitivities have pretty much become modern day orthodoxies that often neither recognize nor remember their sociolinguistic co-origins. Nevertheless, precisely here, where the links to linguistics are strongest, there is hardly any link to sociology or to sociocultural theory more generally (none at all, indeed, except for the ethnomethodological corner thereof). If we look for linkages between macro-sociolinguistic efforts and the parent disciplines, the situation is even less heartening, because not only are such links exceedingly few and far between, but nothing approaching schools of thought or elaborated points of view are discernible. That being the case the likelihood of productive theoretical linkages between micro- and macro-sociolinguistic endeavors is rather remote for the forseeable future.

The terms discourse analysis and stylistic analysis mean different thing to different people. Most narrowly defined, discourse analysis has only to do with the structure of spoken discourse. Such a definition separates discourse analysis from literany stylistics and pragmatics—the study of how people understand language in context. At the other end of the spectrum, discourse analysis can be carried out on spoken and written texts, and can include matters like textual coherence and cohesion, and the inferencing of meaning by readers or listeners. In this case, it includes pragmatics and much of stylistics within its bounds. Similarly, stylistics can apply just to literary texts or not, and be restricted to the study of style or, on the other hand, include the study of meaning. For the purposes of this review, relatively wide definitions of both areas have been assumed in order to make what follows reasonably comprehensive. The main restriction assumed is that the works discussed will be relevant to the examination of literature in some way. The section on literature instruction will include matters relevant to both native and non-native learners of English, and will also make reference to the integration of literary and language study.

This study proposes and tests a comprehensive model (with demographics, informal digital learning of English, ideal/ought-to L2 self, L2 enjoyment, and self-perceived communication competence) of face-to-face and digital communication anxiety's relationship to willingness to communicate in a second language (L2 WTC) within in-class, out-of-class, and digital contexts. A structural equation model of survey responses from 1,269 Koreans learning English as a foreign language (746 secondary and 523 university students) showed that in all three settings, students with lower anxiety showed greater L2 WTC. Within in-class and out-of-class contexts, students with higher self-perceived English ability had lower face-to-face anxiety, which in turn yielded higher L2 WTC. In digital settings, students with a higher ideal L2 self (i.e., a more positive evaluation of their ability to attain the ideal L2 self) showed less overall anxiety (comprising face-to-face and digital anxieties), which yielded greater L2 WTC. These results suggest that future studies can test whether interventions to lower anxiety can increase L2 WTC across communication venues.

Response times (RTs) have become ubiquitous in second language acquisition (SLA) research, providing empirical evidence for the theorization of the language learning process. Recently, there have been discussions of some fundamental psychometric properties of RT data, including, but not limited to, their reliability and validity. In this light, we take a step back to reflect on the use of RT data to tap into linguistic knowledge in SLA. First, we offer a brief overview of how RT data are most commonly used as vocabulary and grammar measures. We then point out three key limitations of such uses, namely that (a) RT data can lack substantive importance without considerations of accuracy, (b) RT differences may or may not be a satisfactory psychometric individual difference measure, and (c) some tasks designed to elicit RT data may not be sufficiently fine-grained to target specific language processes. Our overarching goal is to enhance the awareness among SLA researchers of these issues when interpreting RT results and stimulate research endeavors that delve into the unique properties of RT data when used in our field.

This paper reports the findings of a study that investigated the relationship between phonological short-term memory (PSTM), working memory capacity (WMC), and the level of mastery of L2 grammar. Grammatical mastery was operationalized as the ability to produce and comprehend English passive voice with reference to explicit and implicit (or highly automatized) knowledge. Correlational analysis showed that PSTM was related to implicit productive knowledge while WMC was linked to explicit productive knowledge. However, regression analysis showed that those relationships were weak and mediated by overall mastery of target language grammar, operationalized as final grades in a grammar course.

The word Communicative has, unfortunately, become so widespread that it has suffered the fate of words like democracy and freedom. At worst it has lost any precise meaning and comes to refer to any set of characteristics considered by its user to be good, modern, progressive. At best, the word is invested with precise meaning, but what is meant by it differs from user to user so that it becomes impossible to make generalizations on the topic which would satisfy all those who use the term. Indeed, any attempt at generalization is likely to lead to more divisive debate than it is to bring warring parties together.

Language anxiety plays a key role in language learners’ silent behaviors in class (King, 2013). Given its public nature and emphasis on interaction within it, the classroom context plays a significant role in the production of language anxiety. Anxious people are more likely to negatively appraise situations, affecting their behavior. That is, it is not just the subject content that causes anxiety, it is also the cognitive processes that occur from being in the classroom environment (Clark & Wells, 1995; Horwitz et al., 2010). King (2014) found that anxious language learners’ thoughts often contain feared predictions about the social costs of speaking in the classroom and worries about how peers might negatively evaluate performance. These fears about external factors contribute to learners becoming inhibited and using silence to avoid the discomfort of speaking. Also, while anxious learners tend to have content-specific concerns, for example, making mistakes, self-focused thoughts are often intensified by contextual factors, such as interacting with peers (Gregersen & Horwitz, 2002). This article looks at the relationship between language anxiety and silent behavior from a cognitive-behavioral perspective, emphasizing how the dynamic interplay between an individual learner and the classroom context can result in even the most motivated and proficient learners missing opportunities to develop their language skills through target-language interaction.