The twentieth volume of ARAL, as an anniversary edition, explores the evolving discipline of applied linguistics from a variety of perspectives. Rather than ask fifteen authors to provide general positions on the status of applied linguistics, the invitation to contribute to ARAL 20 asked authors to consider the status of applied linguistics from the perspective of their own fields of study and major topical issues. Contributors received a small set of questions asking them to situate their own fields of study within a framework informed by applied linguistics. For example, contributors were asked 1) how their own research sub-fields were located within applied linguistics, 2) how applied linguistics will make the strongest contributions in the coming decade---from the perspective of their own sub-fields, and 3) what obstacles confront their sub-fields and applied linguistics more generally. Some of the authors have addressed these issues explicitly while others have recognized more implicitly the frame of reference that is provided by applied linguistics.

The Annual Review of Applied Linguistics is celebrating its 20th anniversary, and we are happy to report that applied linguistics is still with us. We also believe that the field of applied linguistics is here to stay, much as psychology and English literature are disciplinary fixtures after having developed in the early 20th century. The development of a disciplinary field, however, is a messy undertaking, typically driven by needs and purposes that extend beyond individual goals or planned group purposes. In the case of applied linguistics, its continued development can only be channeled and planned indirectly. Moreover, full disciplinary acceptance will only occur to the extent that applied linguistics responds to wider societal needs and its expertise is valued by people beyond the professional field. Applied linguistics, as an inter-disciplinary field, faces the additional challenge of trying to cohere around a set of central notions with which a diverse group of practitioners can identify. So, while some may want an orderly blueprint for disciplinary development and acceptance, and some practitioners may generate discussions around such orderly expectations, none is likely to arise. At the same time, certain events and institutional structures help to shape and form the discipline without recourse to any neat blueprint. Examples include the establishment of the English Language Institute at the University of Michigan in 1941, the establishment of the Department of Applied Linguistics at Edinburgh in 1956, the establishment of the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington, DC in 1959, the formation of the TESOL organization in 1966, and the formation of the American Association for Applied Linguistics in 1977.

As linguistics has extended its scope over the past thirty years from an exclusive concern with knowledge of the abstract code, what Chomsky referred to as Internalized (I) language, to a consideration of the way this knowledge is actualized in Externalized (E) language (Chomsky 1988), so it has inevitably gained in face validity as an area of inquiry relevant to practical life. A linguistics that deals with real, as distinct from ideal, speaker-listeners has a more obvious applicability to the problems real people actually have with language. Nevertheless, one cannot just assume a direct correspondence between the E externalized language the linguist describes and the E experienced language that is a reality for the user. The applicability of linguistic descriptions is a potential that has to be realized, and this is where applied linguistics comes in.

Language teacher education programs are likely to be housed in departments of applied linguistics, education, or languages and literature: These three disciplines provide the knowledge base and opportunities for developing skills and dispositions for both prospective and experienced teachers. Until recently, applied linguistics (psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, language description, and language teaching and testing methodology) formed the core of language teacher education, not unexpected, since language teaching has historically been the primary focus of applied linguistics (Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford 1997, Crandall 1995; 1996). However, during the last decade, general educational theory and practice have exerted a much more powerful influence on the direction of the education of both preservice and inservice language teacher education, resulting in a greater focus on: 1) practical experiences such as observations, practice teaching, and opportunities for curriculum and materials development (Crandall 1994, Johnson 1996b, Pennington 1990, Richards 1990, Richards and Crookes 1988); 2) classroom-centered or teacher research (Allwright and Bailey 1991, Chaudron 1988, Edge and Richards 1993, Nunan 1989, van Lier 1988); and 3) teacher beliefs and teacher cognition in language teacher education (Freeman 1996; 1998, Freeman and Johnson 1998a, Richards and Nunan 1990). In fact, the last decade can be viewed as a search for a theory of language teaching and, by extension, of language teacher education at both the micro and macro levels (Freeman and Johnson 1998b, Johnson 1996a, Larsen-Freeman 1990, Richards 1990). Language teacher education is a microcosm of teacher education, and many of the trends in current language teacher education derive from theory and practice in general teacher education. These trends include at least four major shifts.

Thirty-five years ago, three leading British linguists published a landmark volume entitled The linguistic sciences and language teaching (Halliday, McIntosh and Strevens 1964). The careful wording of the title of this book was something of a clarion call; in effect, the authors promised to usher in a Brave New World of a stronger descriptive base for pedagogical materials.

This chapter presents a survey of recent developments in teaching Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP) in North Africa and discusses current issues and future challenges. It devotes more space to ESP in this francophone environment given the greater demand for English, as opposed to other languages, and the more abundant ESP activity in terms of practice, research, and publications.

The first charge to the contributors to this volume was to consider applied linguistics from the point of view of the subfield each of us represents. Such a formulation constructs writing and literacy research as subordinate to the super-ordinate domain of applied linguistics and this was not one that corresponded well with my own sense of my work in relation to applied linguistics. To investigate this issue further, I informally questioned other writing researchers about whether or not they consider themselves applied linguists and what they do to be applied linguistics.

I have tried to practice linguistics as a form of social action, a practice which Halliday (e.g., 1985) has suggested cannot be other than ideologically committed. This practice dissolves the linguistics vs. applied linguistic opposition which has evolved in response to the hegemony of American formalism—whose idealizing reductivity comes nowhere near serving the needs of language users and their aids around the world. In its stead, linguistics as social action engages theory with practice in a dialectic whereby theory informs practice which, in turn, rebounds on theory, recursively, as more effective ways of intervening in various processes of semogenesis are designed (Martin 1997; 1998a). My own experience of this engagement has been mainly in the field of literacy, especially of writing development in primary and secondary school. Accordingly, I'll draw on this experience to address the sub-field ‘Writing and Literacy,’ writing as a linguist working across what is generally read and has been increasingly institutionalized as an applied vs. theoretical frontier.

The field of language policy and planning is clearly a sub-field within applied linguistics. It generally does not draw heavily on formal linguistics, except for aspects of corpus and status planning. However, it does draw extensively from a range of disciplines in order to plan, implement, and evaluate language policies that respond to the needs of stake holders of various types. Despite continuous development of the field, aspects of language policy and planning need to be developed further. One of the key areas where policy can be enhanced considerably is in the area of policy and planning evaluation. This direction of inquiry is also relevant to a number of other areas within applied linguistics.

In this brief article, I discuss the relationship between language testing and the other sub-disciplines of applied linguistics and also the relationship, as I see it, between testing and assessment. The article starts with a brief exploration of the term ‘applied linguistics’ and then goes on to discuss the role of language testing within this discipline, the relationship between testing and teaching, and the relationship between testing and assessment. The second part of the article mentions some areas of current concern to testers and discusses in more detail recent advances in the areas of performance testing, alternative assessment, and computer assessment. One of my aims in this article is to argue that the skills involved in language testing are necessary not only for those constructing all kinds of language proficiency assessments, but also for those other applied linguists who use tests or other elicitation techniques to help them gather language data for research.

Just as applied linguistics (AL) may be said to be an emerging discipline, so too is one of its sub-fields, second language acquisition (SLA). The parallelism may not be surprising; after all, a difference of only about twenty years separates the points at which the two were identified as autonomous fields of inquiry. Then, too, the two share central defining concepts. AL draws on multidisciplinary theoretical and empirical perspectives to address real-world issues and problems in which language is central (Brumfit 1997). SLA draws on multidisciplinary theoretical and empirical perspectives to address the specific issue of how people acquire a second language and the specific problem of why everyone does not do so successfully. Furthermore, the two share something else: At this juncture in the evolution of AL and SLA, both are grappling with fundamental definitional issues, ones even extending to the nature of language itself. (See Larsen-Freeman 1997a for how this is true of AL.) Should AL and SLA deal successfully with these challenges, both will have much to contribute in the decade to come. Should they instead succumb to internecine feuding and fragmentation, the future will not be as bright.

One of the most intractable issues in the field of second-language acquisition (SLA) research has been the attempt to identify the role of social context in influencing (or not) the process of acquisition of a second language. The central question has been whether a theory of SLA must account only for the psycholinguistic processes involved in acquiring an interlanguage (IL), or, alternatively, whether social and sociolinguistic factors influence those psycho-linguistic processes to such an extent that they too must be included in such a theory. It seems very clear that SLA is a psycholinguistic process. But to what extent are those psycholinguistic processes affected by social context? In 1985, Selinker and Douglas proposed a construct of ‘discourse domains’ to show how social and psycholinguistic processes might be included in a theory of inter-language; Young (1999) reviews that proposal and a recent attempt to test it, concluding that the results are still uncertain. After 15 years, this is still a lively issue in the field of SLA. Indeed, it is becoming a source of increasing conflict both within the field of SLA and within such areas of applied linguistics as second/foreign language teaching and second/foreign language teacher training. In this article, I will briefly summarize the problem, and review and summarize the current evidence being brought to bear upon this issue in the SLA research literature.

This review chapter addresses two questions: What has the recent research conducted in French immersion programs in Canada contributed to our understanding of second language acquisition (SLA)? What has it contributed to the broader field of applied linguistics? In this chapter, I also consider briefly what the research contributions of the coming decade might be and discuss some of the obstacles that may be faced in Canada in continuing to conduct research concerned with French immersion education.

Two decades of international research in applied linguistics provides a large number and variety of topics from which to choose for this special anniversary edition, but certainly one of the most significant among these choices is the critical period hypothesis (CPH). Few topics in applied linguistics have continued to captivate the interests of researchers and practitioners so intensively and for such a long period of time as the CPH. Indeed, one could easily go back to reviewing three, not two decades of sustained research and continuous interest in this topic (Lenneberg 1967, Scovel 1969). If number and diversity of publications is indicative, the CPH has engendered even more interest and controversy now than in any previous decade. Why is this so?

This article addresses the relationship between two major terms, psycho-linguistics and applied linguistics, and in the process, explores key issues in multilingual processing. A straightforward definition of psycholinguistics is provided by Kess (1991:1): ‘The field of study concerned with psychological aspects of language studies.’ In the last decade, the definition has become more restricted, leaving out more social-psychological aspects like the study of attitudes in language use. Here, psycholinguistics will be further restricted to the study of processes of language production and perception (as opposed to acquisition and attrition).

I am personally delighted to have an opportunity to contribute ‘Concluding Thoughts’ to this volume, prepared as it is at the juncture of millennia, since it provides a similar opportunity for reflection and prediction, and since for one reason or another I have been an active participant in, and observer of, developments in the field of applied linguistics for more than three decades. Indeed my own career path reflects clearly the permeability of traditional departmental or disciplinary boundaries that has at once contributed to the sense of excitement and potential in the field and simultaneously to its lack of rootedness (e.g., I have at various times held academic appointments in departments of psychology, linguistics, and modern languages as well as worked for a private philanthropic foundation and a mission-oriented non-profit organization).