Traditionally, The Language Teacher editors write a farewell message in the last available issue during their tenure, and since May is a special issue on gender, April is mine. Unfortunately, there isn't enough space for me to individually acknowledge all those who have volunteered their time and effort over my year as editor, but there are a few I'd like to single out. First, I'd like to thank David Kluge for all his help and support this past year. I always walked away from long telephone calls with David with new ideas for authors or articles and new solutions to problems. Thanks also to Eguchi Eiko and Kinugawa Takao for their hard work as Japanese editors. Thanks too to Tricia Thornton and Craig Sower whose input, insight, and effort beyond the call helped me immensely. Special mention also goes to Robyn Najar, Paul Lewis, and all the column editors, proofreaders, and others who make editing TLT even remotely possible. Finally, thanks to Laura MacGregor, who in her few months as associate editor has shown that she's going to be an excellent editor.
In this month's issue, Peter Robinson, who wrote the first article in the "State of the Art of Second Language Acquisition" series (June 1997), takes a look at what SLA has to say that teachers can readily use in the classroom. This article, like other SLA articles in the series, is a bit longer than TLT articles usually are, but I have again taken the liberty of providing more space for what I think is a very relevant issue. The other articles this month include two which look at writing: Steve Cornwell and Tonia McKay discuss ways to help students make the difficult transition from writing short essays to writing longer research papers, and Karen Fedderholdt describes a course in which her students wrote diaries about their experiences in learning to use language learning strategies. Finally, Curtis Kelly uses a look at the history of higher education in the United States to peer into the future of education in Japan, and Ann Smith and Wilma Nederend look at using interviews to teach oral English.