Editorial / Éditorial

This issue is always a special one for the editors of CMLR, as it is the one in which we publish the manuscript of the winner of the Best Graduate Student Paper Award. The editors rely on the advice of the Board members in selecting the award winner, and we would like to thank all those who participated in the process for the quality of their commentaries on the papers. We had a number of strong submissions for the award this year, some of which will be undergoing revisions for eventual publication in the journal. This year's winner is Muhammad M. Abdel Latif, a doctoral student in the Department of Language and Linguistics at the University of Essex. His paper, titled 'Toward a New Process-Based Indicator for Measuring Writing Fluency: Evidence from L2 Writers' Think-Aloud Protocols,' reports on a study that drew on qualitative and quantitative analyses of data from writing think-aloud protocols produced by university learners of English. It provides evidence that the mean length of writers' translating episodes represents a significant process-based indicator of writing fluency. We extend our congratulations to Muhammad for this fine contribution to the journal. Note that the call for papers for next year's competition appears in this issue: the due date for submissions is October 31, 2009.

There are three other articles in this issue. The first, written by Laurent Cammarata, is titled 'Negotiating Curricular Transitions: Foreign Language Teachers' Learning Experience with Content Based Instruction.' Cammarata reports on a phenomenological study of teachers' learning experiences during a professional-development program as they transitioned toward content-based instruction, highlighting the need for greater scaffolding and a safer environment in which to explore new practices. 'L'acquisition des aspects grammaticaux en L2 : une étude sur la contribution des similarités entre la L1 et la L2,' by Jesús Izquierdo, examines the use of the passé composé and the imparfait among hispanophone adult learners of French. The results show that although the presence of a similar form in the L1 (Spanish marks this tense-aspect distinction) can facilitate learning, the acquisition of temporal morphology in a second language presents some challenges even when there are L1/L2 similarities. Philippa Bell, author of 'Le cadeau or la cadeau? The Role of Aptitude in Learner Awareness of Gender Distinctions in French,' had adult anglophone learners of French complete a crossword with reliable noun endings for attributing gender; her results show that inductive language learning ability played a role in determining which of the participants became aware of the gender distinction in the crossword input.

In addition to these research papers, you will find in this issue a number of thoughtful reviews of recently published books and teaching materials on language teaching and learning.

Subscribers to CMLR will be receiving an extra issue of the journal this year: a fifth, extraordinary issue will come out later in 2009, titled Bilingualism in a Plurilingual Canada: Research and Implications and guest edited by former CMLR Co-editor Larry Vandergrift, as well as Stacy Churchill, Distinguished Research Fellow at the Official Languages and Bilingualism Institute. This issue will contain a selection of papers from the conference with the same title organized by the Official Languages and Bilingualism Institute (OLBI) at the University of Ottawa in June 2008. Publication of the issue has been made possible by funding received from the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages (OCOL).

The next issue of CMLR (66:1, September 2009) will be our annual special issue, guest edited by Duan Duan Li and Patsy Duff and titled Heritage, Minority and Indigenous Language Education in Canada. We would also like to draw readers' attention to the next two special issues: Current Developments in Form-Focused Interaction and Second Language (L2) Development (co-edited by Hossein Nassaji and Daphnée Simard), to appear in September 2010; and Language Barriers in Access to Health Care Services (co-edited by Norman Segalowitz and Eva Kehayia), to appear in September 2011. The calls for papers for...