The current renewal of interest in language creativity raises a number of intriguing problems, as is evident from the stimulating papers in the recent special issue of "Applied Linguistics". According to the editors of this issue, however, these papers are not concerned with creativity in a general pragmatic sense but more specifically with poetic…

The author replies to a critique a paper he wrote on defining applied linguistics as a field of inquiry and the extent to which corpus analysis can properly inform its practices. (Author/VWL)

Examines two areas of applied linguistics: corpus analysis and critical discourse analysis, where linguistic description makes claims to be directly relevant to real world problems in language use and learning. (Author/VWL)

Several problematic issues in second-language teaching and testing are discussed, including artificial distinctions made between the four language skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing) and appropriate usage in each, the relationship of language skills and language ability, and the distinction between language usage and language use. (MSE)

Attempts to clarify the notion of language competence and draws on its relevance to language teaching practices. Language use competence may involve the adjustment of pre-assembled and memorized patterns and not so much the generation of expressions by direct reference to rules. (Author/CB)

Discusses what the proper professional role of teachers should be in relation to others involved in the educational process as a whole and what provision should be made to sustain and develop teachers in that role. An annotated bibliography is included. (44 references) (LET)

There is a need for a new approach to the teaching of English as a foreign language which will shift the focus of attention from the grammatical to the communicative properties of language in order to show how the language system is used to express scientific facts and concepts. (Author/LG)