My research review of 2007 is somewhat shorter than in earlier years in order to allow space for the journal's impressively increased number of other articles. This naturally adds to my problems of selection, especially as 2007 witnessed the welcome appearance of new international journals in the form of Innovation in Language Learning & Teaching and a considerably re-vamped Language Learning Journal. Accordingly, my selection of articles is not intended as a representative sample of the Applied Linguistics field but should be taken as a personal judgement based on attempting an appropriate range of the following: journals, languages, topics, countries, institutional settings, levels of proficiency, learner age, theory, practice, and personal interest. My selection is organised under a number of headings, but these offer only a general clue as to what a particular article is about, since most articles reviewed have reverberations across a number of headings rather than one alone. In addition, what I say about a particular article is not meant to be a summary. Those wishing to see a summary should go to the article itself and read its abstract. My account of a particular article may in fact reflect only one theme within the article which I have chosen to highlight.

In this review of research in applied linguistics and language teaching and learning in Singapore, more than one hundred national publications for the period 2000–2007 will be reviewed. Since this period encompasses certain changes that were introduced in Singapore schools at the start of the new millennium, it would be appropriate to take stock of the studies that showcase these changes. These studies fall under five main areas of local research: norms, standards and models; English language curriculum and policy; reading and writing instruction and research; mother tongue teaching and learning; and the teaching of English to international students. In this review, representative work under each research area will be discussed, and this will be done within the broad historical and sociopolitical context of research in Singapore. The results of the review suggest that practical concerns assume priority over theoretical issues, which are relegated to secondary importance. This can be explained in terms of the role of the state in education reform and governance and its top–down decision-making processes, the impact of globalization on education, and the role of education in the management of race relations in the country.

Interest in L2 vocabulary learning and teaching started long before the nineteen-eighties (for references to earlier studies, see Rob Waring's database http://www1.harenet.ne.jp/~waring/vocab/vocrefs/vocref.html) but it declined with the advent of generative linguistics to the point of discrimination and neglect (Meara 1980). In 1986, I argued that vocabulary was about to acquire a legitimate and prominent place within applied linguistics (Laufer 1986), but I did not envisage the vast quantities of lexical research that would have been produced in the following two decades. One of the central concerns of vocabulary researchers is the source of L2 vocabulary learning. Is it L2 input, enhanced input, interaction, communicative tasks, non-communicative ‘artificial’ exercises, list learning, or repetition? A similar question is addressed by SLA researchers in general. This similarity of interests, which demonstrates the integration of vocabulary into mainstream SLA, prompted me to define the topic of this timeline as I did. And since the field of SLA developed in the 1980s, this timeline starts in the nineteen-eighties. I focus here on the external sources of learning, i.e. language input and instructional techniques, and not on learner-related variables, like motivation, L1, age, or strategies of learning. Nor do I focus on any other areas of lexical research, important as they may be, such as the construct of vocabulary knowledge, lexical development, testing, bilingual mental lexicon, or corpora analyses.

This presentation is situated within the general framework of Vygotsky's educational theory, which argues that development in formal educational activity is a fundamentally different process from development that occurs in the everyday world. A cornerstone of Vygotsky's theory is that to be successful education must be sensitive to learners' zone of proximal development. This requires the dialectical integration of instruction and assessment into a seamless and dynamic activity. The presentation includes a discussion of how the integration is systematically achieved in the process known as dynamic assessment and illustrates through analysis of data from advanced learners of French how this functions in second language education.

Using the British ‘Index to Theses’, we found forty-seven Ph.D.s relating to second and foreign language learning and/or teaching defended in English universities in 2006. Objective criteria led us to fourteen theses which had investigated both teaching and learning. Over half of these adopted a process–product research design with the aim of finding causal relationships between teaching and learning. Six theses focused on individual differences (motivation, strategies, attitudes), with three adopting an ‘effectiveness-of-intervention’ approach and three following more descriptive, exploratory designs. The designs of the ‘effectiveness-of-intervention’ studies varied greatly, ranging from naturalistic evaluations to highly controlled randomised control experiments. They covered a range of pedagogical concerns, including the use of computers, error correction, language portfolios, learner strategies and communicative-style activities. In addition to our own comments on the quality of the studies and reports, we present considerable methodological detail to enable the reader to evaluate the validity of the findings and claims made in each study. We argue that Ph.D. theses need to demonstrate fully that the implications drawn from the study are supported by the data collection and analyses described, which was not always the case in the theses reviewed. Finally, we make suggestions for future areas of investigation by postgraduate researchers.

The Centre for Applied Language Research at the University of Southampton is one of two research centres within the discipline of Modern Languages. Established in 2004, CALR now has more than 50 members, predominantly faculty members working in the School of Humanities/Modern Languages, as well as growing number of postgraduate researchers. The Centre has always sought to work collaboratively with other centres and institutions worldwide and regularly hosts visiting international scholars. Additionally, many of its members work closely with the Centre for Transnational Studies, which also comes under the School of Modern Languages. CALR promotes an extensive applied language research agenda, including language education policy, second language acquisition (SLA), foreign language learning (FLL) and teaching, sociolinguistics, intercultural communication and language globalisation. Emanating from the legacy of Christopher Brumfit, the founder of the Centre, CALR work has always reflected an awareness of global and local issues in language use and learning. Brumfit was renowned for balancing his concerns for the rights and freedoms of the language learner with his influential work on classroom pedagogy. Since his passing in 2006, these values have lived on in the work of the Centre.

A colloquium presented at the Second Language Research Forum on 16 October 2008 at the University of Hawaii at Manoa