The series Trends in Applied Linguistics aims to meet the challenges of the rapidly growing field of applied linguistics. Applied linguistics is understood in a broad sense, by focusing on the application of theoretical linguistics to current problems arising in different contexts of human society. Given the interdisciplinary character of applied linguistics the series includes cognitive, psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic and educational perspectives. The following topics are included in the series: Second language acquisition and the acquisition of additional languages Bilingual and multilingual education Language planning and language policy Literacy skills Second/foreign language pedagogy Translation and interpretation Language for specific purposes Discourse analysis Language testing and assessment Child language Language and gender Pragmatics and rhetorics Corpus analysis Critical pedagogies Research methodology in applied linguistics