The growth of Applied Linguistics as a separate discipline is a success story of the 1950s. The field has developed in many parts of the world and is clearly destined to continue developing well into the twenty-first century. Being concerned with the pragmatically motivated study of language in social and cultural settings, Applied Linguistics brings together work in a broad spectrum of fields including linguistics, literary studies, history, anthropology, psychology, sociology, and economics. Journal of Research in Applied Linguistics (RALs) aims to explore how knowledge of linguistics is implicated in all aspects of human endeavor. RALs aims to provide a scholarly venue for the development of Applied Linguistics, reflect the breadth of works in the fast-expanding field, and enable readers to share in the exciting new developments that are taking place at present. This will enable researchers working in the field to share their scholarly works with members of their discourse community, keep abreast of recent practices and discourses within this area, and contribute to enhancing and enriching scholarship in this field of inquiry. RALs will encourage linguists, applied linguists, and practitioners to contribute to the journal by submitting conceptual and empirical research articles and systematic reviews on a wide array of topics including curriculum planning, discourse analysis, pragmatics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, English for specific/academic purposes, technology-mediated second language acquisition, testing and measurement, and literary studies with linguistic orientations.