This volume contains selected papers from the Eight World Congress of Applied Linguistics held in Sydney in 1987. Volume I starts off with an overview of the field by G. Richard Tucker in which he identifies two areas: innovative language education and language education policy. The overal focus of the papers to follow focus on the individual language learner, how that individual, in given contexts or in interaction with specific others, develops a command of a first language, of two or more first languages, or of a second language, in home and in classroom settings. At the same time, cutting across these variables, there is a gradual shifting of attention from investigations of the language learning process to proposals for language teaching curricula and syllabuses.