Editorial.

It never ceases to amaze me how foreign language teaching norms vary in the places where I have lived, taught and worked. I grew up in small town in the southeastern United States where foreign languages were optional in elementary and secondary school. My older friends told me that foreign languages were not required to enter the university and my parents let me make my own choices so I opted out. I chose not to study any foreign languages during elementary or high school. When I entered the university, I became interested in languages and studied Russian.

In the mid-80s, I moved to Finland to study Russian, Finnish and international relations and found, to my surprise, that in Finnish schools all students must begin studying their first foreign language at around age nine. They have a choice of which language to study and they usually choose English.

Language planners in Finland feel choices during basic education are made by parents, not students. Educated parents tend to make educated choices while others may not. Education is usually linked to economic prosperity. So if given the choice better-off may choose to study languages while less well-off students may chose not to study foreign languages and thus limit their opportunities for the future.

In addition, Finland has two official languages: Finnish and Swedish. The Finnish native-speakers (around 92% of the population) must begin studying Swedish and Swedish native-speakers (around 7% of the population) must begin studying Swedish at around age 11 so everyone can understand both of the nation's official languages. Students must begin another foreign language at around age 12. Usually by the end of junior high school, all students have studied the country's other native language and at least two foreign languages. In order to graduate from college or university, students must speak, read and write both of the country's official languages and at least one foreign language and sometimes more depending on their major subject. This is very different from Tennessee where I grew up.

I studied, worked and taught in Finland until the early 90s when I moved to Japan to teach English in junior high school through the Japanese Ministry of Education's Japan Exchange Teaching Program which I highly recommend. In Japan I found that university and college admission tests include an English section. Japanese students usually study English in elementary and secondary school. Many do so in the hopes of gaining admission in a good university. Unlike their Finnish counterparts, relatively few Japanese learners studied additional foreign languages in grade school. Although there is an increased interest in teaching communication skills, English language teaching in Japan has tended to focus on the grammar skills needed to pass the college entrance examinations. When I was in Japan in the 90s, students began studying English at age 12. Now they begin at age 8 or 9 in elementary school. Most Japanese English teachers that I met had a keen interest in improving language education in their country because they cared about their students' futures.

Somewhere along the line I found myself becoming a language teacher. I did a MSc in Teaching English for Specific Purposes and then a doctoral degree focusing on how culture influences English language teaching in Finland and Japan. For the past 5 years have been teaching English and translation in Finnish universities. During this time I have been an exchange teacher and/or guest scholar in the United States, England, Estonia and Belgium. I have found that in each country I visit the foreign language education system is different. Considering this, one could argue that because the systems are different, concepts about language teaching and learning are probably different across national and cultural boundaries.

In my opinion, the cultural variability between language teachers from different backgrounds enriches the language teaching community. We can take advantage of forums such as Academic Exchange Quarterly (AEQ) to learn from one another. In this Fall issue, almost all of the authors have revised their articles at least once in order to take into account the comments of the reviewers. This has meant cooperating via the Internet with scholars, teachers and educators from all over the world. I hope that you will enjoy the articles that are presented and that they will help you improve and help enhance your own classroom teaching and the way that your students learn.

Mike Garant, Ph.D.
University of Tampere, Finland