Because there is a separate section in this volume devoted to the language in education policy, little attention has been focused here on education. Nevertheless, many of the issues raised in such a general coverage of language policy must inevitably have implications for education even though they are not taken up here.

Over the past ten years, conversational analysis “CA” has come to wield a significant influence on second language “L2” acquisition and teaching. It originally developed out of a school of sociology called ethnomethodology, develped by Garginkel (1967). Following the work of Garfinkel, Sacks and his colleagues, Schegloff and Jefferson, establised CA, the study of the structural organization of ordinary conversation,. Sack' lecture notes (1964–1972), which comprise appeoximately 2,000 pages, continue to provide a foundation for contemporary CA. In explaining why he developed a framework for CA, Sacks states:

Has language pedagogy advanced since the topics included here were last addressed in the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics in 1998 (Vol. 18)? Yes, in many directions, as a survey of these contributions reveals. Even with respect to the traditional “four skills,” discussed in the first section, professional understanding of best practices is now more differentiated with respect to both purposes and means of language instruction, in part because of advances based on recent related research. Vandergrift's review gives some sense of the interrelationships and the differences between learning to listen and listening to learn in a second language and explores the directions pedagogy may take. Regarding instruction in speaking skills, McCarthy and O'Keeffe provide insights into the impact of corpus-based language research on materials available and related pedagogical options. Grabe uses current research in reading to derive 10 propositions with good potential for instructional improvement and further research as a basis for practice. Silva and Brice document the explosion of interest in and research attention to second language writing and identify many potential areas for future investigation.

Transformative justice is a vision, a framework, and a theory of change which pushes for radical abolition and reimagining of entire systems. It is a community-led strategy which centers on and seeks to uproot structural determinants of oppression. In this article, I outline how applied linguistics can and should draw on transformative justice principles as a methodology for doing applied linguistics and as an underpinning theory of change for the discipline itself. I explore how transformative justice in applied linguistics involves addressing the colonial roots of the discipline and its complicity in perpetuating raciolinguistic ideologies and co-constituted discourses of linguistic deficiency. I argue for new conceptualizations of impact which prioritize community solidarity. I argue for applied linguists to end collaborations with the police, the military, and the prison industrial complex, showing how these collaborations rely on systems of punitive accountability and modest reforms. I argue that transformative justice is a life-affirming theory of change for the discipline of applied linguistics and for the marginalized communities we work with.

Recent developments in the teaching of foreign languages at school level have been primarily, if not exclusively, concerned with attempts to move away from the more academic form-focused views of language and language teaching that prevailed well into the 70s, towards the more practical and communicatively-oriented approaches in vogue today. Many projects have added useful insights in this areas, and it would be impossible to do justice to them all. It is proposed, therefore, to limit the scope of this chapter to the description of a rather as a subject rather than as a medium of instruction. It is hoped that these will be seen as representative of the much wider range of school foreign language teaching developments that have taken place across the world in recent years. First, however, a brief attempt will be made to outline the background from which these more communicatively-oriented approaches have emerged.

In recent years the term “literacy” has rapidly expanded its space in the lexicon. Only a short time ago it was an abstract and rarely used noun, usually referring to the state of communities or societies. It was not in the vocabulary of American schooling, along with reading, writing, language arts, or English. The related terms literate and illiterate, if applied to individuals, were limited to adults and to either highly refined or very rudimentary knowledge of written language. Now the word literacy has been extended on the American scene to express knowledge of other domains in such phrases as computer literacy and scientific literacy, and it is even being pluralized as literacies. It is also being used more and more, along with literate (but not illiterate), as an over-arching term for knowledge and activities that were until recently designated separately as reading and writing in discussions of theory, research, and practice. This use of the term reflects a more unified, holistic view of reading and writing as linguistic enterprises situated in social and intellectual contexts, a view that has been expanding with marked consequences.

In 1980 Frank Otto wrote the last entry for this series on computer aided instruction (CAI). A great deal has happened in the field since then. This brief paper will discuss several trends and issues that have recently become clear and attempt to describe the state of the field at present. The reader should be forewarned, however, that the situation is changing very rapidly, sometimes daily, and that what is true as of this writing may not be true tomorrow. The entire field of computers is changing very rapidly.

A discourse on literacy in Southern Africa to be meaningful should answer the following questions: What is the status of languages and literacy in the countries of Southern Africa? What policies of literacy promotion are being pursued, and with what policy justifications and results? What is the nature of the emerging symbioses among spoken languages, and among literacies in the mother tongues, national or official languages, and the metropolitan languages?

In an influential paper published in the late seventies, H. H. Stern distinguished between learning a language through a process of conscious study and practice (i.e., formally), or through use in the environment (i.e., functionally). According to Stern (1981), this aspect of language behavior can be characterized as a psycholinguistic/pedagogic continuum, or ‘P-scale.’ There is nothing inherently good or bad about activities at either end of the scale, and in organized language teaching one often finds an interplay between formal and functional approaches.

Over the last few years many statements have been made indicating that a variety of groups and organizations recognize and support multilingualism and multiculturalism in Australia. It is less clear at a policy level, however, how these ‘;ism’ can or should be maintained. Smolicz (1983) has argued in a variety of forums that language is a ‘core’ value for many cultural groups. If language is lost or destroyed, these cultures become de-activated and form sub-cultural variants on the majority culture.

It is a privilege to be Editor-in-Chief of the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics in 2020 as it celebrates its 40th year. This is my fifth issue as Editor. I will begin this short introduction by paying tribute, with the help of Bill Grabe (Northern Arizona University), to the founding editor of the journal, Robert Kaplan (1929–2020). Without Robert Kaplan, none of us would be reading these pages. We will then turn to some comments from each of the previous editors on a few of the highlights of their time editing the journal, along with words for the future. After this, I will describe some recent updates, go through a few of the historical successes of the journal, and then turn to the contents of the exciting current issue, “Looking back and moving ahead.”

Interlingual and intercultural communication in the form of oral and written translation is as old as mankind. Only in the past 40 years has it achieved recognition as a profession on an international scale: the Fédéeration Internationale dee Traduoteurs (FIT), which today embraces 49 national associations, was founded in 1953; the Association Internationale des Interprètes de Conférence (AIIC) came into being in the same year. Many countries began to offer both academic training and degrees to future professionals in the field; the Institute for Translator and Interpreter Training at the University of Vienna, for instance, celebrated its 40th anniversary a few years ago (cf., Festschrift 1983).

In the political divisions within South Asia there has traditionally been no organized effort for language policies.1 Language was essentially related to one's caste, village, district, and state. Beyond this, one identified with languages associated with religion (Sanskrit or Arabic), or learned and literary texts (mainly Sanskrit and Persian). At the time of Indian independence (1947), one task of the new government was to unravel the status and position of almost 560 sovereign states which were ruled by an array of mahārājās, nawābs, and lesser luminaries, depending on the size and the revenue of each state and subdivision. Each state state was a kindgom unto itself, and such political divisions did not foster a national language policy. In India, the largest country in South Asia, four languages were used for wider communication as bazār languages or languages of literature and intranational communication: Hindi (and its varieties, Hindustani and Urdu), Sanskrit, Persian, and later, English (cf., for Sanskrit, Kachru and Sridhar 1978; Sharma 1976; for English, Kachru 1969; 1982a). The Hindus tended to send their children to a pāṭhśālā (traditional Hindu school mainly for scriptural education) for the study of the scriptures and some basic knowledge of the śāastras (Sanskrit instructional texts, treatise), and the Muslims tended to send their children to a maktab (traditional school for Koranic instruction). The denominational schools (vidyāZaya) provided liberal arts instruction in Sanskrit, Persian, Hindi, Arabic, or in the regional languages.

The purpose of the current study is threefold: (a) to present a descriptive picture of classroom anxiety (FLCA), reading anxiety (FLRA), and listening anxiety (FLLA) in foreign language classrooms; (b) to explore the association between FLCA, FLRA, and FLLA; and (c) to test the mediating effect of FLCA on the relationship between FLRA and FLLA. The participants included 341 tertiary-level students studying at the English Preparatory Program of four public universities in the Turkish EFL context. The data were collected at the beginning of the 2022 fall semester through the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale, Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale, and Foreign Language Listening Anxiety Scale. The descriptive findings indicated a moderate level of FLCA, FLRA, and FLLA among the participants. In addition, significant and positive correlations were found between these three types of anxieties, with the strongest correlation between FLRA and FLLA. In the last stage of the analysis, it was found that FLCA partially and significantly mediated the relationship between FLRA and FLLA. Finally, directions for further research on investigating skill-based anxieties are presented.