John Walmsley studied English Language and Literature at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and General Linguistics, and History of Education, at Edinburgh and Durham respectively. He held teaching posts at Hamburg University and St Mary's College, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, before being appointed Professor of English at the University of Bielefeld, Germany. His publications cover topics in linguistics, applied linguistics and foreign language teaching, and the history of linguistics. Current interests include the role of linguistics in education. From 1993 to 1994 he was Visiting Fellow at the Research Centre...