The starting point for this collection is a chapter by Dick Allwright on the language learning and teaching classroom experience entitled Six Promising Directions in Applied Linguistics. The other distinguished contributors respond to this discussion with their own interpretations and from their own experience. The collection problematizes prescription, efficiency, and technical solutions as orientations to classroom language learning. Complexity and idiosyncrasy, on the other hand, are recognized as central concepts in a move towards centralizing teachers' and learners' own understanding of 'classroom life', in the contexts of language learning, adult literacy education and language teacher education.
About the Author: DICK ALLWRIGHT formerly Chair in Applied Linguistics at Lancaster University, UK KATHLEEN M. BAILEY Professor of Applied Linguistics at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California, USA ROGER BARNARD Senior Lecturer at the Department of General and Applied Linguistics of the University of Waikato, New Zealand MICHAEL P. BREEN formerly involved in Language Education and Language Teacher Development MARIA ANTONIETA ALBA CELANI Professor Emerita at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP), Brazil HYWEL COLEMAN Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the School of Education, University of Leeds, UK. He is also Director of HCIE Ltd, the international education consultancy JOHN F. FANSELOW currently the president of a 600 student residential tertiary institution in New Zealand, International Pacific College. He is Professor Emeritus of Columbia University, Teachers College, New York, USA DONALD FREEMAN Dean of Graduate and Professional Studies at the School for International Training, Brattleboro, Vermont, USA, where he also directs the Centre for Teacher Education, Training and Research ADRIAN HOLLIDAY Professor of Applied Linguistics at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK ROZ IVANIC Professor of Linguistics in Education at the Department of Linguistics and English Language, and Associate Director of the Literacy Research Centre at Lancaster University, UK ELAINE E. TARONE Director of the Centre for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA), and Distinguished Teaching Professor and Chair of the English as a Second Language Program in the Institute of Linguistics, ESL and Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Minnesota, USA MING-I LYDIA TSENG currently doing her Ph.D. research at the Department of Linguistics and Modern Language, Lancaster University, UK TONY WRIGHT School of International Education at the College of St Mark and St John, Plymouth, UK DEVON WOODS Associate Professor at Carleton University, Canada