This review examines applications of quality management (QM) in language education. QM approaches have been adapted from methodologies developed in industrial and commercial settings, and these are briefly described. Key aspects of QM in language education are the definition of purpose, descriptions of principles and practice, including various descriptive frameworks, and the place of reflective practice and action research. Quality descriptions for different aspects of language teaching – examinations and assessment, education for migrants, for young learners, in mainstream education – are summarised. There is an account of accreditation and recognition of language teaching institutions and a critical review of some of the contradictions and conflicts in the QM approach, such as those between accountability and trust, and between creativity and standardisation. The strengths and weaknesses of auditing and quality inspection methods are examined.

Creating a timeline for formulaic language is far from simple, because several partially independent lines of research have contributed to the emerging picture. Each exhibits cycles of innovation and consolidation over time: domains take a leading role in developing new knowledge and then fall back, while another area comes to the fore. Thus, some of the first observations about formulaic language, back in the nineteenth century, were in the clinical domain of aphasia studies. By the early to mid twentieth century it was theories of language structure that had most to say, until eclipsed by the Chomskian model, which saw little significance in lexicalised units larger than the word (an issue discussed by Jackendoff 2002; see table entry). Meanwhile, changes in language teaching methodology in the mid to late twentieth century increasingly urged teachers to ask how adult learners could best master multiword strings to improve fluency and idiomaticity – a question still asked today. By the end of the twentieth century, new technological advances revealed frequency in usage as a probable agent of formulaicity, and these chimed with new models of lexical knowledge based on neural pathways and networks that could be strengthened by repeated exposure. Drawing on these models, we have seen, as we move into the twenty-first century, the development of new approaches to modelling language as a system – emergent grammars, including Construction Grammar – that are more accommodating of large, internally complex units. And finally, as we gradually understand more about how the brain accesses and retrieves linguistic material, we are seeing a resurgence of interest in formulaic language in neurological and clinical contexts.

This paper presents an approximate replication of Milton's (2007) study on lexical profiles and learning style. Milton investigated the assumption that more frequent words are acquired before less frequent ones. Using a vocabulary recognition test (X-Lex) to measure vocabulary size, Milton found that L2 English group profiles show a linear relationship between greater knowledge of high frequency words and lesser knowledge of low frequency items. The profiles also showed variability in individual profiles. Milton hypothesised that the individual differences in profiles are partly attributable to different approaches to learning, as elicited via language aptitude tests of memory and analysis. Learner profiles that showed a linear relationship with vocabulary frequency scored higher on analysis; learners who had irregular profiles scored higher on memory. The aim of this replication is to confirm whether learning style helps to determine what L2 lexis is learnt. It duplicates the vocabulary size test and the memory and analysis tests. However, the replication uses regression analyses, rather than a single ANOVA, to determine whether memory or analysis contributes to vocabulary knowledge. Moreover, the participants’ L1 backgrounds are mixed, and they are older. The results from this replication do not support Milton's findings, but a post-study supports the notion that at low proficiency there is a relationship between memory and vocabulary size. It is concluded that neither memory nor analysis is related to patterns in lexical profiles, but that memory contributes to vocabulary size.

Until 1989, the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) could have been viewed as an interest group of the Linguistics Society of America (LSA); AAAL met in two designated meeting rooms as a subsection of the LSA conference. In 1991, I was asked to organize the first independent meeting of AAAL in New York City, with the help of Nathalie Bailey as local chair. With the planning committee, we made several important changes that would take effect in the first independent AAAL conference: we would have many more sessions than could be accommodated in two rooms, we would invite colloquia as well as individual papers, and we would go out of our way to recruit international presenters, even though our name was the american Association for Applied Linguistics. I remember that first independent AAAL conference as a resounding success, with 400 enthusiastic participants.

In the popular mind, constructing a language has always been seen as an odd activity, one that seems to fly in the face of ‘natural’ language dynamics. It is, nonetheless, a very old activity, and attention to its various stages is an important part of the study of linguistic history – and, indeed, of modern scientific development. The first stage involves attempts (highly speculative, of course) to recapture the original lingua humana, as spoken in the Garden of Eden. At a later stage, scholars tried to create entire languages ab ovo, motivated by the desire for a more logical and regular variety that would better reflect and channel scientific classification. Later still – and on into the modern era – ‘artificial’ languages have been assembled from pre-existing rules and components. At all stages, the work has been underpinned by hopes for a more practical medium, but there have also been expectations that a language that was both regular and widely shared would contribute to international harmony and understanding.

The field of second language (L2) writing has moved beyond the false dichotomies between process- and genre-based pedagogies perpetuated in the 1980s and 1990s, but there has still been little research on how the two are actually reconciled in the classroom. Consequently, L2 writing instructors are left with an incomplete picture, unsure how to incorporate such research into their own classrooms. This paper describes how one teacher, Juval, encountered the research on process- and genre-based pedagogies and negotiated his understanding of this research into his practice. Alongside Juval's voice is the voice of a teacher educator, Paul, setting these frameworks in the context of larger developments in the field of L2 writing. Their discussion takes Juval from his initial view of writing as a grammar-elicitation task to his resort to research for answers to the complex needs of his students. With further support from colleagues, Juval reaches a place where the two pedagogies are not only reconciled but work together to prepare his students for their writing tasks. His narrative chimes with the experience of many L2 writing teachers and should inspire novice and experienced teachers to reflect on their relationship with theory and research.

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.

With the advent of globalization and the increasingly multilingual and multicultural nature of nations, institutions and classrooms, the fundamental nature of foreign language instruction is changing. Such traditional notions as: ‘native speaker’, ‘target culture’, ‘standard L2’ are becoming problematic with the influx of immigrants to industrialized nation-states, the diversification of accents, and the stratification of language varieties. Foreign language classrooms, too, are becoming less and less homogenous: lacking common points of reference in a common L1, students have to learn the L2 without any common prior cultural or historical context. Caught between the need to impart a skill that will be ‘usable’ in a variety of global settings and the desire to develop an L2 academic literacy that is specific to a given national culture, foreign language study is challenged to reconcile the local and the global, its national premise and its transnational entailments. This colloquium explored the changing nature of the challenges facing the teaching and learning of foreign languages in an age of global information technologies, global job market, and global migrations. In particular it focused on the notion of the ‘foreign’ in foreign language education and how globalization has affected this foreignness.

Two panel discussions presented at the Second Language Acquisition Graduate Student Symposium on 29 and 30 April 2011 at the University of Iowa.

In 1975 (Vol. 8.4, 201–218), S. P. Corder, during the course of his state-of-the-art review Error analysis, interlanguage and second language acquisition, focused on the recent literature on simplified linguistic systems and suggested that research had shown that interlanguage systems often resemble other simple codes such as pidgins or creoles ‘. . .now recognized to bear considerable resemblance to each other whatever their linguistic provenance’ (p. 211). He then went on to suggest that the study of pidginisation and creolisation may help us better understand the L2 learning process.