L'apprendimento della lingua italiana come lingua straniera (L2), probabilmente per motivazioni storico-culturali, è di carattere specialistico. Di conseguenza, l'impronta globale della lingua italiana, rispetto ad altre lingue straniere come l'inglese, lo spagnolo ed il francese, risulta essere abbastanza limitata. Sorprende quindi il fatto che in diversi progetti di ricerca, nel campo della linguistica applicata e dell'apprendimento delle L2, l'italiano sia la lingua studiata dai partecipanti oggetto di studio. Questa rassegna di studi verte ad identificare gli approfondimenti della ricerca nel campo dell'apprendimento della lingua italiana come seconda lingua piuttosto che il contributo dell'italiano alla teoria della SLA in genere. Inoltre, ha l'obbiettivo di valutare lo stato attuale della lingua italiana nell'ambito dell'istruzione formale. L'autore suggerisce la presenza di un rapporto tra la comprensione del processo di apprendimento della lingua italiana e la richiesta dell'italiano come L2. Questa rassegna riassume e categorizza quasi settanta studi condotti in una varietà di contesti educativi e offre proposte e stimoli per futuri progetti di ricerca.

Italian has for many years been considered somewhat of a specialist language when studied as a second language (L2) and this is perhaps due to historical and cultural factors. Its footprint worldwide compared to such languages as English, Spanish and French is therefore somewhat limited. Surprisingly, however, there is a considerable body of research in applied linguistics and second language acquisition (SLA) in which Italian features as the language being studied. This review sought to identify the extent to which the research provided specific insights into how Italian as a second or foreign language (L2 Italian) is learnt as opposed to the ways in which it has contributed to SLA theory-building more generally. In addition, it sought to assess how well Italian is holding up as a language being learnt in formal instructed contexts. The author suggests that insights into the learning of Italian and uptake by Italian students may be inter-related. The present review summarises and categorises nearly seventy empirical studies conducted in a variety of educational contexts and offers suggestions for future avenues of research.

The possibility that anxiety interferes with language learning has long interested scholars, language teachers, and language learners themselves. It is intuitive that anxiety would inhibit the learning and/or production of a second language (L2). The important term in the last sentence is ‘anxiety’. The concept of anxiety is itself multi-faceted, and psychologists have differentiated a number of types of anxiety including trait anxiety, state anxiety, achievement anxiety, and facilitative-debilitative anxiety. With such a wide variety of anxiety-types, it is not surprising that early studies on the relationship between ‘anxiety’ and achievement provided mixed and confusing results, and Scovel (1978 – this timeline) rightly noted that anxiety is ‘not a simple, unitary construct that can be comfortably quantified into ‘high’ or ‘low’ amounts’ (p. 137). Scovel did not, however, anticipate the identification in the mid-1980s of a unique form of anxiety that some people experience in response to learning and/or using an L2. Typically referred to as language anxiety or foreign language anxiety (FLA), this anxiety is categorized as a situation-specific anxiety, similar in type to other familiar manifestations of anxiety such as stage fright or test anxiety.

At a time of diminishing resources, the sum of apparently minor personal decisions about food can have immense impact. These individual choices are heavily influenced by language, as those with vested interests seek to persuade individuals to act in certain ways. This makes the language of food politics a fitting area for an expanding applied linguistics oriented towards real-world language-related problems of global and social importance. The paper draws upon five consecutive research projects to show how applied linguistics research may contribute to public policy and debate, and also how, by entering such new arenas, it can develop its own methods and understanding of contemporary language use.

Various positions regarding the Second Language Acquisition (SLA) – Language Pedagogy (LP) nexus have been advanced. Taking these as a starting point, this article will examine the nature of the SLA/LP relationship both more generally and more concretely. First, it will place the debates evident in the different positions regarding the relationship in a broader educational and professional context by examining the nature of the theory/practice nexus – because the issues at stake do not just concern SLA. Second, it will examine critically a number of options for bridging the divide (e.g. through presenting the pedagogical implications of research, engaging teachers in researching their own classroom or promoting research–teacher collaboration). Third, it will probe the relationship in terms of a framework that links (i) SLA researchers, (ii) classroom researchers, (iii) teacher educators and (iv) language teachers. This framework will serve as a basis for formulating a set of eleven principles that can guide attempts to use SLA theory and research in teacher education programmes.

The premise of this paper is that the interactional practices constituting teacher–student interaction and language learning are interdependent in that the substance of learners' language knowledge is inextricably tied to their extended involvement in the regularly occurring interactional practices constituting their specific contexts of learning. After laying out the central components of a theoretical framework for understanding the interdependent nature of interaction and learning, I provide an overview of the Initiation–Respond–Feedback organization (IRF), a ubiquitous classroom interactional practice, and then examine two instances of the IRF taken from two language classrooms. I pay particular attention to actions in the IRF that give shape to learners' developing understandings of, and skills for, using the target language. After briefly discussing the likely consequences of extended participation in the IRF in terms of L2 outcomes, I suggest directions for future research.

This paper considers the ways in which American students' active engagement in local host communities abroad is at risk. Constraining forces include the new demographics of American study abroad, prejudicial attitudes toward international education and sheltered program designs, a research enterprise committed to representing the perspectives of students primarily, and the influence of globalization on communicative practice and habits of thought. To counter these influences, the elements of an activist stance are proposed.

The Moray House School of Education, The University of Edinburgh, UK; 7–8 May 2009

The seminar, organised by Joan Cutting and Bróna Murphy, aimed

• • to bring together researchers involved in both emergent and established academic corpora (written and spoken) as well as linguists, lecturers and teachers researching in education, be it language teaching, language-teacher training or continuing professional development in language awareness, all of whom may be new to corpora and its applications;

• • to explore the possibilities of working together with researchers in speech recognition and synthesis, and other specialists in technological innovation;

• • to provide an opportunity to disseminate the latest developments in academic language corpora.

Centre for Applied Linguistics, University of Warwick, UK; 15–16 May 2009

The overall co-ordinators of this seminar were Steve Mann and Sue Wharton. C. K. Jung was web co-ordinator, and the supporting committee was made up of Tilly Harrison, Duncan Hunter, Stefanie Stadler, Fei Chuang and Tim Kelly. Approximately 27 people attended, from institutions in Austria, Hong Kong, New Zealand and the UK.

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.

Held at the American Association for Applied Linguistics Annual Conference, Denver, CO, USA; 21 March 2009.

This all-day colloquium was part of an ongoing discussion of ways that methods and frameworks from micro-ethnography, Conversation Analysis (CA), and Vygotskian Sociocultural Theory are re-specifying ‘language’ and ‘acquisition’ from a socio-interactional view of SLA.

The EPP is a collaborative programme of interdisciplinary research, whose goal is to provide a set of Reference Level Descriptions (RLDs) for English for all six levels of the CEFR (Council of Europe 2001; Little 2006), from A1 to C2.