This eleventh edition was developed during the encyclopaedia's transition from a British to an American publication. Some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time and it is considered to be a landmark encyclopaedia for scholarship and literary style.

This book reviews the record of the foreign language teaching profession over the past several years and examines the successes and determines the reasons for failures.

The Pulse of a Malaysian University discloses the research agendas of language scholars at a Southeast-Asian university, allowing western readers to gain deeper knowledge of an Asian perspective on language issues. In Part A, five authors address diverse ethnolinguistic/sociolinguistic issues such as the Minangkabau Pasambahan, media response to terrorism, negotiation discourse, bilingualism, and status of foreign languages. In Part B, four writers focus on the teaching of English in Malaysia with emphasis on grammar, reading, writing, and literature. Altogether, these essays feature important cultural and linguistic data revealing the range of insight and knowledge that Malaysian/Indonesian professionals possess on such issues.

Professor Stern puts applied linguistics research into its historical and interdisciplinary perspective. He gives an authoritative survey of past developments worldwide and establishes a set of guidelines for the future. There are six parts: Clearing the Ground, Historical Perspectives, Concepts of Language, Concepts of Society, Concepts of Language Learning, and Concepts of Language Teaching.