The Editor and Board of Language Teaching are pleased to announce that there were two tied winners of the 2011 Christopher Brumfit thesis award: Dr Cecilia Guanfang Zhao and Dr Catherine van Beuningen. Both theses were selected by an external panel of judges on the basis of their significance to the field of second language acquisition, second or foreign language learning and teaching, as well as their originality, creativity and quality of presentation.

Aim To recognize doctoral thesis research that makes a significant and original contribution to the field of SLA and/or foreign/second language teaching and learning.

The concept of Business English has undergone some major shifts in the last few years because of a number of developments, such as advances in genre theory and the coming together of English for Business Purposes and Business Communication, inspired by the realization that there is a gap to be bridged between the academy and the globalized business world. Drawing on advances in the analysis of business discourses, especially in applied genre analysis, this state-of-the-art review revisits the frameworks currently used in English for Business Purposes and Business Communication (or, more generally, Professional Communication) to suggest an integration of the two approaches for the design of English for Business Communication (EBC) programmes. The study incorporates an extensive review of much of the relevant published work in all the three areas mentioned above to identify some of the main issues in EBC, and illustrates a gradual shift in the rationale for the design and implementation of EBC programmes.

Written corrective feedback, referred to hereafter as ‘written CF’ and also known as ‘grammar correction’ or ‘error correction’, has been a controversial topic in second language studies over the past fifteen years. Inspired by John Truscott's thought-provoking 1996 essay in Language Learning, many different researchers have undertaken new programs of investigation, while others have engaged in scholarly synthesis and argumentation around the topic.

Most academics' intuitions about statistics follow those of naive laypeople – that is, we often think that a sample should reflect the population characteristics more closely than it does, and expect less variability in samples than is truly found in them. These intuitions may prevent us from understanding why modern developments in statistics are needed. Another intuition most researchers hold is that it is better to be conservative when performing statistics, and this may involve adjusting p-values for multiple tests, using more conservative post hoc tests, or setting an alpha value lower than .05 when possible. However, the more we try to control against making an error in being overeager to find differences, the stronger the probability that we will make an error in not finding differences that actually exist. These two forces need to be counterbalanced, and this involves increasing the power of our tests. Robust statistics can increase the power of statistical tests to find real differences. I discuss the need for robust techniques to avoid reliance on classical assumptions about the data. Examples of robust analyses with t-tests, correlation, and one-way ANOVA are shown.

The last couple of decades have seen a dramatic increase in corpus availability and a steady growth in the number of supporters of the use of corpora in language teaching. Yet there still seems to be a long way to go before corpora can be understood and used by language teachers in general. Novice corpus users often fail to grasp that corpora do not work in the same way as the more familiar language learning resources – such as dictionaries, grammar books and textbooks – that they are accustomed to using. I therefore propose a series of task-based, consciousness-raising exercises to help teachers (who are not corpus linguists) understand the basics of corpora. The tasks proposed are not about learning how to use a specific corpus or software, but about learning how to use corpora in general.

This review covers recent applied linguistic research in Finland and Sweden during the years 2006–2011, with particular emphasis on foreign language learning and teaching. Its primary aim is to inform the international research community on the type of research that is going on in these countries. Special attention is given to topics which have attracted a lot of interest in the area: language immersion schools and CLIL, cross-linguistic influence, corpus linguistics (English as a lingua franca) and language use in multilingual urban settings.

The Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century (SFLL) (National Standards in Foreign Language Education Project [NSFLEP]), originally published in 1996, were envisioned by many as the panacea for providing a new and exciting direction for foreign language education in the United States. The perceived impact of these National K-16 Student Standards has been witnessed throughout more than a decade by scholarly works that have acknowledged their role as ‘a veritable change agent’ (Sharpley-Whiting 1999: 84), ‘a vision for foreign language education in the new century’ (Allen 2002: 518), and, more recently, as ‘a blueprint and framework for change’ (Terry 2009: 17). The research that has been done on the Standards since their inception has attempted to provide concrete ways for the field to embrace this new framework and thereby realize a Standards-based curriculum and perhaps even revolutionize language education. This work has consisted largely of (1) implementational research (both with and without experimental design) that proposes specific strategies for addressing the Standards in planning, teaching, and assessment (Schwartz & Kavanaugh 1997; Abbott & Lear 2010); (2) survey research that analyzes self-reported information regarding teachers' pedagogical beliefs about the Standards and ways in which they claim to be addressing Standards in their classrooms (Allen 2002; ACTFL 2011), and (3) White papers that disseminate opinions and insights by leaders in the field regarding the impact that the Standards are having in areas such as language instruction, curriculum and course design, and educational policy (Sharpley-Whiting 1999; Donato 2009; Glisan 2010).

Presented at the 16th World Congress of Applied Linguistics (AILA), Beijing Foreign Studies University, China, 24 August 2011.

SLA research has long been challenged by the flawed comparison of L2 learners to native speakers (Bley-Vroman 1983). Since the start of the new millennium, applied linguists have paid increasing attention to studies of English as a lingua franca (ELF), defined as ‘communication in English between speakers with different first languages’ (Seidlhofer 2005: 339). From the ELF perspective, L2 speakers of English are no longer considered as ‘failed native speakers’ who produce problematic talk, but as ‘highly skilled communicators’ (Jenkins, Cogo & Dewey 2011: 284) who attempt to use multilingual resources to achieve their communicative goals.

Presented at the 16th World Congress of Applied Linguistics (AILA), Beijing Foreign Studies University, China, 27 August 2011.

This symposium aimed to capture the multiple and dynamic processes of language and identity in the context of globalization. The pervasive process of globalization has inevitably affected the previously existing social and linguistic order. Broad, stable and normal patterns of conduct are being deconstructed and reshuffled; multiple, overlapping and conflicting forms are being shaped and reshaped. The abnormal becomes normal; disorder becomes the new order. The symposium explored this issue from two complementary perspectives – a macro perspective that focuses on language policies, and a micro perspective that focuses on how people struggle to articulate their identities.

Presented at the 16th World Congress of Applied Linguistics (AILA), Beijing Foreign Studies University, China, 24 August 2011.

The goal of the symposium was to show that a Dynamic systems/Complexity theory (DST) perspective will provide important insights into the L2 developmental process. Kees de Bot (University of Groningen) introduced the symposium by outlining the basic characteristics of a dynamic system: all factors or variables involved in language development are interconnected, interact with each other over time, and affect each other differently over time on different time scales. Initial conditions such as the learner's L1, motivation or level of proficiency are crucial and systems self-organize over time. Development is not linear and learners are not all the same, so variability and variation are the norm.

The Editors, 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 45. Reviewers are absolutely critical to the functioning of any peer reviewed journal, and we are very much in their debt.