Why do teachers do research, and should they do research at all? After all, one may think that writers write, teachers teach, researchers do research, that is the way it has always been and that is the way it should be. However, we also know how much dissatisfaction and frustration it breeds when theory is separated from practice and practice is not rooted in theory. The ideal scenario in which theory informs practice and practice informs theory can only come about if some ambitious teachers are willing to devote time, energy and knowledge to systematically investigating their classrooms and their learners. Their results can enrich their own practice and that of others and can also feed into the shaping and developing of underlying principles. 

This issue of our journal gives a small selection of articles introducing various types of teacher research, each of which has implications for the classroom. First a secondary school teacher, Elekes Katalin, describes a research method, the think-aloud technique, which has been applied successfully by researchers and can be used by classroom teachers themselves if they wish to get a deeper understanding of how their learners perform learning tasks. 

Our international contributor, Bojana Petric, who formerly worked as an EFL teacher in Yugoslavia, investigated the
development of the listening skills of a group of university students. She found that without systematically working on these skills, the students' listening test results did not improve. There is a lesson in this for both college and university language instructors and school teachers, namely that mere exposure to the foreign language is not enough. 

Csomay Enikõ's research article is linked to the topic of listening, but its focus is the nature and the characteristics of academic lectures the students are expected to understand. The author, who has taught academic skills at university level, compares the features of lectures to those of academic writing and oral conversations and her findings are equally informative to those who deliver lectures and to those who prepare students for listening to them. 

Bukta Katalin's contribution is practice oriented. Her article is a typical example of how a teacher performing routine teacher's tasks, such as marking test papers, becomes aware of a research opportunity and gets absorbed in it. The monotonous chore of correcting hundreds of compositions renders itself as a means of getting information about the test taking strategies of language learners. The author's observations and reflections beg for a follow-up stage to her research. 

In the second half of the journal you will find the familiar Book reviews section, introducing a good variety of teachers' materials. Some ESP course-books, a grammar book, an exam practice handbook and a book on the use of children's songs are described and evaluated. Those of you who would like to review and get complimentary copies of books for future issues of novELTy can choose from an updated list of publications, courtesy of the representatives of major EFL publishers. 

In the Events section you can read an account of the 7th International Pragmatics Conference, a major event for all applied linguists that Budapest can be proud to have hosted. We close this issue with the information sections of The British Council and IATEFL Hungary. Please check out the dates of upcoming conferences, the details of exams and enticing cultural events, and the new INSET opportunities. 

This issue of novELTy is meant to demonstrate how the gap between theory and practice can be bridged in various ways. We hope that one of them is your way. 

Edit H. Kontra and Kormos Judit Editors