Introduction

The dialogue referred to in the title of this article concerns the 2006 Polish Neophilological Society (PNS) conference in Kraków (11-13 September 2006) Dydaktyka języków obcych na początku XXI wieku [Foreign language teaching at the beginning of the 21st century]. The Society is the only multilingual foreign language teachers’ organization in Poland which provides a dialogic forum for an exchange of ideas and opinions in its annual conferences. The 2006 conference was mainly devoted to evaluation and assessment in foreign language teaching. Apart from the main focus, other papers concerning foreign language teaching and learning were also presented during the conference. The conference language was Polish because the speakers were Polish teachers of English, German, French, Russian, Italian, Spanish, and marginally, Polish as a second language. The aim of the following analysis is comparing different approaches of the conference participants to academic discourse focused on foreign language learning and teaching.

My claim is that different traditions linked with academic discourse in foreign language teaching in different countries and academic settings have their impact on the theoretical approaches, methods of research and ways of presentation of seemingly similar topics. What follows is a diversity in the treatment of knowledge, attitudes towards listeners and readers, as well as global versus local approaches to the language of communication and relevant literature. Foreign language teachers in Poland, on the one hand, are influenced by target language traditions but, on the other hand, they create their own approaches on the basis of local situations and problems.