To our knowledge, this is the first edited volume devoted solely to classroom research on interlanguage pragmatics, and as such is situated at the interface of second language acquisition, pragmatics, and educational research. The chapters in this collection address a range of issues in the learning of pragmatics and discourse in classroom contexts – both second and foreign language – from a diversity of approaches to teaching and research. Coverage is provided not only for various options in instruction but also for the assessment of pragmatic proficiency, a heretofore largely neglected area. It is our hope that the work reported in this collection will inspire others to further explore issues raised here in their own research, thus guaranteeing that this will not be the last book on this topic.

We would like to extend our sincere appreciation first and foremost to our contributors for undertaking the research reported here, agreeing to include it in our collection, and following through in such a timely and professional manner at each stage of the process. Thanks also to the series editors for their support, two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments, as well as everyone else we had the pleasure of working with at Cambridge University Press, including Olive Collen, production editor. And a special thanks to David Thorstad, whose expert handling of our multilingual manuscript was nothing short of amazing.