As applied linguists and language testers, we are in the business of "doing language". For many of us, language learning is a lifelong passion, and we invest similar enthusiasm in our language assessment research and testing practices. Language is also the vehicle through which we communicate that enthusiasm to others, sharing our…

For many researchers in the social sciences, including those in applied linguistics, the term ethics evokes the bureaucratic process of fulfilling the requirements of an ethics review board (e.g., in the US, an Institutional Review Board, or IRB) as a preliminary step in conducting human subjects research. The expansion of ethics review boards…

Two issues pertaining to the use of metonymy that plays a central role in Slabakova et al. (2016) are mentioned in the very title of their study--novel metonymy and regular metonymy. In this article I draw attention to some problems with the identification of these as well as with the assumption that these are opposites of each other.

When 'decoloniality' and 'decolonizing' have become words frequently used in conferences and journal publications in our field of Applied Linguistics/Language and Education, as well as on many academics' lips, we start to worry about how they too can be easily co-opted as buzz words emptied of their critical meaning and actional potential and…

Classroom research has long been recommended as a fruitful avenue for English language teaching (ELT) in applied linguistics. Yet recognition of the value of practitioners exploring their own praxis has only recently come to the fore. In this plenary, I focus on Exploratory Practice, a form of 'fully inclusive practitioner research', in which…

How we talk about bilingualism has an effect on how others think about bilingual individuals, and in turn, how "active bilingual learners/users of English" (ABLE) students are assessed and taught in schools. I use a transdisciplinary approach of bridging social semiotics, applied linguistics, psycholinguistics, and cognitive linguistics…

This work provides a chronological and thematic account of empirical studies and position papers on second language (L2) writing scholarship from a complex dynamic systems theory (CDST) perspective. As a theoretical framework, CDST was formally introduced into applied linguistics research by Diane Larsen-Freeman in 1994 (Larsen-Freeman, 1994).…

The concept of constructions has become increasingly important in theories of language acquisition and use during the last 20 years. Constructions are form-meaning pairings that are learned and stored as pieces of linguistic knowledge. Fillmore, Kay, and O'Conner (1988), and Goldberg (1995, 2006, 2019) were among the first linguists who paved the…

Recent scholarship has called for deeper communications and collaborations between writing studies and language studies because such interdisciplinary connections can facilitate the growth of both fields. While research has explored the potential exchanges between writing studies and language-related fields (such as applied linguistics, second…

The Applied Linguistics field is criticized for neglecting Indigenous languages and cultures as well as social justice issues. Some see technology as exasperating the digital divide. We are urged to reflect on our work to see whose interests the field serves and respond with action. I discuss these issues in relation to existing work, arguing that…

This paper constitutes an edited transcript of two online panels, conducted with four scholars whose complementary expertise regarding print literacy and migration offers a thought-provoking and innovative window on the representation of print literacy in applied linguistic research and in migration policy. The panel members are experts on…

This plenary speech provides an overview of applications of corpus research in several core areas of applied linguistics, including second language acquisition and language assessment. It does this by showcasing a number of recent studies carried out by or with involvement of the author. These studies all focus on phraseological aspects of…

Applied linguists and Communication scholars have mainly adopted different yet complementary approaches to research on language and health communication. Using discourse-analytic (DA) approaches such as conversation analysis and corpus analysis, applied linguists tend to focus on describing and explicating health messaging techniques in naturally…

This paper will introduce the subject of language policies and practices in early childhood education across European migration societies and formulate theoretical and methodological questions. It links perspectives from applied linguistics, most explicitly sociolinguistics, and educational research on language (education) policies and practices,…

In its 40th year, "Language Testing" journal has served as the flagship journal for scholars, researchers, and practitioners in the field of language testing and assessment. This viewpoint piece, written from the perspective of an emerging scholar, discusses two possible future trends based on evidence going back to the very first issue…