As is customary in this annual review, the focus is on research which has been published mainly in international research journals and which has a bearing on the teaching of languages and on those aspects of languages learning and use which seem to have implications for teaching. For the most part, it is additional languages which are under discussion, whether of the second, (third, fourth) or modern foreign or some other variety. 2001 yielded a large number of valuable articles of this sort. Rather than seeking to mention them all, I have made a selection in order to allow certain themes to be developed.

Three themes seemed to me to be of particular interest in 2001: ‘Focus on form’, ‘Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and languages’ and ‘Early language learning’. None of these of course represents a new area of research, but in 2001 they seemed to play strongly. My review begins with a discussion of each of these in turn.

In the sections to follow, cross-reference is made to the abstracts in Language Teaching. Thus, Haley (2001: 02–253) refers to the article published in 2001 and appearing as abstract 253 in the 2002 volume of the journal.