In Physical terms, the Net—a term used generically—is a global system of computer linked by optical cable, telephone connections, microwave, and satellites. It comprises a number of individual networks, from LANs (Local Area Networks in individual institutions) to the largest, the Internet. (See Appendix Glossary for terminology explanations.) In January 1993, the Matrix News estimated that the Net comprised 2,152,000 host computers and 18,150,000 users. Now, in mid-1995, these figures are 3,500,000 host computers and 55 million users world-wide. From its beginnings in the U.S. military establishment, it now reaches into education, research, business and commerce, government, and private use. France is connecting its entire education system to the Internet. And the U.S.A. is leading the way not only in numbers of connections to the Internet, but also in providing access for non-university education fields. The Net is arguably the most dramatic new communications technology of the latter part of the 20th century.

The 1980 Census of the Philippines (National Census and Statistics Office 1983) shows a multi-ethnic population speaking various Austronesian languages of the West Indonesian branch, which are not mutally intelligible but are clearly related to each other under various sub-groupings. The clearest divisions are the Northern Group and the Central Group, with the Northern Group situated in Northern and Central Luzon, and the Central Group located in Central and Southern Luzon, the Visayas, and parts of Mindanao (Zorc 1984). Smaller groups may be found in Eastern Mindanao (Eastern Mindanao Group), Southern Mindanao and Sulu (Sama-Bajaw Group), the area around Lake Lanao (Danao language group), Central Mindanao (the Manobo Group), and the islands of Palawan (the Palawanese Group) (cf., Pallesen 1985).

Various facets of the general topic of multilingualism, including language contact, have been dealt with in previous ARAL volumes (e.g., under separate entries in volumes 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 12, 13, and 15) and as a major substantive focus in volumes 6, 14 and 17. Nonetheless, it does not seem at all surprising that we return to the specific topic of language contact and change in volume 23 given the worldwide incidence of the phenomenon and the attention, and often controversy, which various aspects of language contact, language change or language loss arouses. Thus, I find it interesting that, within the past 12 months, issues related to language contact and derivative implications have surfaced as important factors in public discussions in such disparate settings as the November 2002 elections in several of the states in the United States, the admission of new members to the European Union, and immigration to Australia. Clearly, the topics of language contact and language change are salient and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.

The recent events promoting European integration have far-reaching consequences for language management. Such management may form an explicit part of policy, though often it is reflected implicitly in interventions dealing with other aspects of social and political organization. This article will highlight both explicit and implicit language planning issues at the European level, the latter being more the result of policy interventions rather than deliberate attempts to manipulate language usage. Given constraints on space, it is impossible to handle more specific language planning issues at national or regional levels except as illustrations.

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.

This article addresses the role that different types of media might play in second dialect acquisition. While many scholars agree that broadcast media such as television have little effect on individual speakers’ language use, research across fields (sociolinguistics, second language learning, laboratory phonology, and phonetics) suggests that high levels of engagement could facilitate dialect learning via mediated speech. I will briefly describe the mechanisms underlying acquisition of new dialect features, discuss how these mechanisms might operate when speakers are exposed to speech via specific types of media, and sketch some avenues for future research.

In an cited essay, Hairston (1982) asserts that a revolution is taking place in the teaching of compostition, a revolution she characterizes as involving a basic shift in paradigms with regard to the act of composition. Hairston describes the prevailing view of writing, a view that had its orgins in traditional theories of rhetoric, as one that considers writing a linear process in which writers know what they want to say before they begin to write. The major task of the attends to editing concerns in order to perfect the manuscript. Thus the focus of composition instruction in this paradigm is the product that the writer produces.

Dual language bilingual education (DLBE) teachers, depending on the modality of the program, teach content areas (i.e., language arts, science, math, social studies) in a language other than English (LOTE) and English. DLBE teachers, who teach in Spanish, should be supported by school districts in meaningful ways. These districts should be equipped to provide the necessary academic and professional development for the DLBE teachers. This paper explores the increasing need to support DLBE teachers’ metalinguistic awareness as well as pedagogical language knowledge (see Bunch, 2013) in Spanish. Guided by Charmaz’ (2006) constructivist grounded theory, this paper analyzed ten transcribed audio interviews with a single DLBE teacher. Interview data included video-taped classroom observations (i.e., preplanning and postlesson implementation), robust field memos, and student artifacts. Data analysis suggested the need for further clarification as far as the teacher's own pedagogical language knowledge (PLK; Bunch, 2013) in Spanish. However, data also indicated that this particular educator was able to negotiate the linguistic and content demands of teaching language arts in Spanish by seeking multifaceted resources and using the full extent of her linguistic repertoire.

High-quality replication studies are widely understood to be critical to the growth and credibility of our discipline, as shown in commentaries and discussion since the 1970s, at least. Nevertheless, misunderstandings and limitations in the aims, designs, and reporting of replication research remain, thus reducing the usefulness and impact of replications. To address this issue and improve the rigor, quality, and conduct of replication studies in applied linguistics, a new standard for reporting replication studies that captures several critical features of replication research not discussed in current reporting guidelines is proposed. Importantly, this standard applies basic expectations in replication reporting so that outcomes can be better understood and evaluated. By applying this standard, replication studies will better meet their aims to confirm, consolidate, and advance knowledge and understanding within applied linguistics and second language research. In addition, readers will more easily understand how the replication study was carried out and be able to better evaluate the claims being made.

There is a variety of ways to explore recent approaches to the language and politics connection, and each problematic suggested vjuld encourage a discussion of different issues and different literatures. The boundary strategies represented by this essay are encouraged by my vocation as a social scientist in general and a political scientist in particular. With respect to the first, I shall be focusing on the implications for social inquiry of different construals of language and meaning. With respect to the second, I shall be “reading” the problem of language within a politically oriented code.

In the past two decades bilingual education has become an educational movement and a field of academic inquiry of remarkable growth throughout the world. At first glance this appears to be the outcome of the increasingly hegemonic role of a few languages like English in the western world and countries economically affiliated to it, Russian in the multilingual republics of the Soviet Union, and Putonghua in the People's Republic of China. But a closer look at the first of these areas—the one better known to us—shows how complex the dynamics of language spread and language change are in diverse sociopolitical contexts.

Measurement invariance (MI) is essential to bolstering validity arguments behind psychometric instruments (Zumbo, 2007). Nonetheless, very few second language (L2) anxiety scales, including the most widely used L2 anxiety questionnaire—the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS; Horwitz et al., 1986)—have been tested for MI. The present paper seeks to address this deficiency in the literature (a) by demonstrating why this procedure is key to enhancing our understanding of the latent phenomenon in question, particularly in relation to different language learning contexts, (b) by outlining the main stages of MI testing with specific recommendations for L2 scale developers and users, (c) by providing commendable examples of the application of MI in applied linguistics research in order to illustrate the potential of this technique, and (d) by making a case for employing MI in future validation studies, thereby promoting methodologically sound research practices in the context of anxiety scales and elsewhere in applied linguistics.

In the area of Eastern Africa, the question of language teaching and literacy has not fully discussed as part of one cogent theme. Such works as have appeared on these subjects have been concerned with specific problems, such as literacy and development (e.g., Government of the Republic of Zambia 1975; Kassam 1978; Lamba 1973; Mwanakatwe and Nyirenda 1972; Nyerere 1976); the problems associated with teaching specific languages (Bagunywa 1970; Gorman 1974; ohannessian and Kashoki 1978; Sifuna 1975), or general educational policy with passing references to languages in education (Africa 1980; Fawcett 1970; Gorman 1970; 1971a; 1974; Mutua 1975; Stabler 1969).

This survey is primarily an update of the review published in ARAL I, (Kaplan 1981:2-24). The research on various aspects of bilingualism during the last five years shows three main characteristics. First, there is questioning of some basic concepts which are still considered, as it were, sacrosanct by researchers for the description and analysis of bilingualism--individual and societal--and for actual fieldwork (cf., section 2 below). In such questioning--however mute at present--several theoretical and methodological sacred cows are under attack. Second, one notices a shift in the areas of research towards experimentation, with more precise methodology and techniques, to answer questions concerning the bilingual's brain (cf., sections 5 and 6). Third, there are insightful breakthroughs in crosscultural and cross-linguistic research with serious applied orientation (cf., sections 10 and 11) and, equally important, there is concern for a social commitment in such research. True, in this intense research activity there are very few questions asked which may be considered as breaking new ground. However, the newness lies in the answers which are provided to old questions. In these answers, we notice many fresh insights gained through a wealth of cross-cultural data, through the results obtained from longitudinal studies (e.g., Hakuta and Diaz in press, Rosier and Holm 1980), through the experiments conducted with highly refined and sophisticated tools and techniques of data collection and data analysis, and through increasing understanding of the bilinguals' and monolinguals' neuropsychological processes.

The inventions of writing and printing constitute the first two revolutions in information recording and transmission. The current development of electronic management of text, somewhat prefigured by Remington and the typewriter, consitutes a third revolution. This article deals with the current state of play in text production and consumption in the specific context of electronic text production and comsumption.

Language contact and change occur continuously, whether or not they are noted, recorded, or analyzed. The intensity and frequency vary, and can vary dramatically according to geographic and historic circumstances. Contributions to this volume revisit some of the topics last discussed in the 1997 Annual Review of Applied Linguistics on multilingualism (Grabe, 1997), update them with connections to the ever-increasing bibliography for these subjects, and extend them into some new directions. Many of these topics, and some of the new directions, testify to the vision of Charles A. Ferguson. His comprehensive grasp of the multiple points of intersection between language and society, prominent in the academic literature of the last forty years and epitomized by the selections in Huebner (1996), fully merits the special dedication of this volume.

As a neurodevelopmental disorder, autism is characterized by impairments and differences at the levels of both brain and behavior. Communicative impairments in autism are a core feature of the disorder, and a rapidly expanding literature is exploring language in autism using the tools of cognitive neuroscience, particularly electroencephalography and brain imaging. Recent research indicates consistent differences in the degree to which language-specific processes are lateralized in the brain, and it also suggests that language impairments are linked to differences in brain structure that may lead to inefficient coordination of activity between different neural assemblies to achieve a complex cognitive task, defined as functional connectivity. We review findings from current work and suggest that neurobiological data are critical in our ability to understand the mechanisms underlying behavioral differences in communicative skills. Going beyond simple dichotomies between delayed versus deviant development, we can use such data to ask whether behavior reflects processes that are merely inefficient or, instead, whether impairments at the behavioral level reflect fundamental differences in brain organization and the networks involved in various tasks.

The study of the relationship between bilingualism and cognitive development has struggled with the dual definitional problems of the key component concepts. Bilingualism has been defined at various levels of functional definition. These include linguistic, cognitive, and social-psychological characteristics of individuals, as well as societal characteristics such as ethnicity and other sociodemographic variables. Failure to distinguish between these various definitions of bilingualism has led to confusion in deciphering the relationship of this elusive concept with cognitive development.

The major local (Austronesian) languages of the Philippines are Cebuano, Tagalog (the basis of pilipino), Ilocano, Hiligaynon, Bicol, Waray (Samber-Leyte), Kapampangan, and Pangasinan (rank ordered according to the number of first-language speakers). Earlier, any language which had at least 500,000 first-language speakers was considered a major language; with the growth in population, this number has been pushed to 1,000,000. All but Pangasinan, which has about 950,000 first-language speakers, have over a million first-language speakers based on the 1975 census. (A census was taken in 1980 and preliminary reports have been released; however, a breakdown according to language speakers is not yet available.)