A collection of essays in honour of the former Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Groningen. The essays encompass theoretical advances in educational linguistic thinking, as well as a sample of methodological developments in the areas of language learning and teaching.

1. Language and language learning: An introduction; 2. Arthur van Essen: as seen by another professional, the late W. R. Lee OBE MA PHD; 3. List of Arthur van Essen's publications; 4. List of Contributors; 5. Part One. History of Linguistics; 6. 1. Linguistics, historicism and the humanities (by Koster, Jan); 7. 2. The man who knew too much: J. M. Hoogvliet as a teacher and theoretician of language (by Noordegraaf, Jan); 8. 3. Applied linguistics, old and new (by Sciarone, Bondi); 9. 4. Karl Buhler's child psychology: Methodological preliminaries (by Vonk, Frank J.M.); 10. Part Two: Essays; 11. 5. An exploration of the art and science debate in language education (by Block, David); 12. 6. Phonology, lexical semantics and syntax in aphasia and natural language acquisition in adulthood (by Bastiaanse, Roelien); 13. 7. Language teaching as political action (by Byram, Michael); 14. 8. How's this for fun?: The role of humour in the ELT classroom and ELT teaching materials (by Medgyes, Peter); 15. 9. Identity and differentiation of the lexicon through language corpora (by Gvishiani, Natalia); 16. 10. ESP - a variety of English and/or a type of language course? (by Thurmer, Uta); 17. 11. Categorising in discourse: The case of Dutch ander (by Ensink, Titus); 18. 12. SVOV in German and Dutch: Interface between discourse prominence and subject identification as a parsing requirement (by Abraham, Werner); 19. Part Three: Studies; 20. 13. Literacy in Dutch of poorly schooled adult immigrants from the Netherlands Antilles (by Berenst, Jan); 21. 14. Medical discourse as professional and institutional action: Challenges to teaching and researching languages for special purposes (by Candlin, Christopher N.); 22. 15. Content- and language-integrated learning, culture of education and learning theories (by Van de Craen, Piet); 23. 16. Content-based language teaching: Language in the mathematics classroom (by Deen, J.Y.); 24. 17. Theoretical approaches to second-language learner varieties (by Jordens, Peter); 25. 18. The role of form in language learning (by Lier, Leo van); 26. 19. A methodology for evaluating the effectiveness of vocabulary treatments (by Meara, Paul); 27. 20. The place of knowledge about language in the mother tongue and foreign language curriculum (by Mitchell, Rosamond); 28. Part Four: Reports; 29. 21. Towards an alphabetical grammar of Modern Israeli Hebrew (by Bekkum, Wout J. van); 30. 22. The use of word frequency data in the teaching of English as an alternative/additional language: Reflections on recent EET-list experience and experiments (by Goethals, Michael); 31. 23. Helping advanced EFL learners improve their written English through self-correction tasks (by Kouraogo, Pierre); 32. 24. A web-based foreign-language assistant (by Nerbonne, John); 33. 25. Subject didactics as the science of the foreign-language teaching profession (by Simensen, Aud Marit); 34. Index