This issue brings together a collection of papers by major researchers from various international institutions, who were invited to contribute papers on the latest ESP trends, particularly research into writing in academic settings. Most of the authors in this volume argue that there is a general lack of specific guidance to writers as to how to tackle the rhetorical conventions which allow them to meet the expectations of the members of the international scientific community; and all the authors without exception have in common as their prime concern offering assistance to novice writers, and especially non-native speakers of English, with the acquisition of the necessary rhetorical skills to produce successful academic writing in English.

This special issue devoted to "Life Writing and Gender: Practices & Theories" offers some examples of the different concepts and perspectives which can be applied to texts dealing with written lives.

Different linguistic approaches are present in this monographic issue that interrelates semantics and syntax. Theories like Systemic Functional Grammar, Frame Semantics or the Lexical-Constructional Model enable researchers to analyze the mechanisms that may explain the ‘transition’ from lexical semantics to grammatical structures within the framework of a functionally and/or cognitively-based conception.

Eva Darias Beautell is the guest-editor of the monography where six more  authors elaborate on Canadian literature of the end of 20th and beginning of the 21st century from different perspectives: multiculturalism, new historicism, diaspora studies, environmentalism and gender studies.

Number devoted to the study of Old English literature, language and philology from the perspective of innovative methodological approaches.  More recent data provided by historical, archaeological or linguistic disciplines such as cognitive linguistics, functional linguistics, metatheoretical renewals in the philological study, among others, have produced compelling results and new facets in our perception of the medieval and Anglo-Saxon worlds.