Janusz Arabski is a professor of English and Chairman of the English Language Institute at the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland. He has published a number of books and articles in the areas of applied linguistics, foreign language learning, psycholinguistics, contrastive studies and lexicography.

• IntroductionPart 1: Language Contact and Language Transfer Revisited1. On the Ambiguity of the Notion of 'Transfer' - Hans W. Dechert (Kassel Universität)2. Language Transfer in Language Learning and Language Contact - Janusz Arabski3. Could a Contrastive Analysis Ever be Complete? - Terence Odlin (Ohio State University)4. The Importance of Different Types of Similarity in Transfer Studies - Hakan Ringbom (Åbo Akademi)5. Language Contact vs Foreign and Second Language Acquisition - Elżbieta Mańczk-Wohlfeld (Uniwersytet Jagiellonski)Part 2: Language Contact Observed6. Genre: Language Contact and Culture Transfer - Andrzej Lyda (Uniwersytet Slaski)7. Cross-linguistic Influence and the Collocational Competence of Polish Learners of English - Justyna Leśniewska (Uniwersytet Jagiellonski)8. International Terms and Profile Transfer: On Discussion - Krystyna Warchał (Uniwersytet Slaski)9. Influence of English on Polish Drug-related Slang - Magdalena Bartłomiejczyk (Uniwersytet Slask)Part 3: Lexical Transfer in Language Processing10. Why Money Can't Buy You Anything in German: A Functional-Typological Approach to the Mapping of Semantic Roles to Syntactic Functions in SLA - Marcus Callies (Phillips- Universität Marburg)11. Lexical Transfer: Interlexical or Intralexical? - David Singleton (The University of Dublin)12. The Interaction of Languages in the Lexical Search of Multilingual Language Users - Danuta Gabrys-Barker (Uniwersytet Slaski)13. Assessing L1 and L2 Lexical Knowledge in Early L2 Learning - Anna Niżegorodcew (Uniwersytet Jagiellonski)14. Code-mixing in Early L2 Lexical Acquisition - Joanna Rokita (Akademia Pedagogiczna w Krakowie)Part 4: Lexical Transfer in Fixed Expressions15. Metaphorical Transferability - Rudiger Zimmermann (Phillips- Universität Marburg)16. On the Use of Translation in Studies of Language Contact - Jolanta Latkowska (Uniwersytet Slaski)17. On Building Castles on the Sand, or Exploring the Issue of Transfer in the Interpretation and Production of L2 Fixed Expressions - Anna Cieślicka (Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza)18. 'Don’t Lose your Head' or How Polish Learners of English Cope with Idiomatic Expressions - Liliana Piasecka (Uniwersytet Opolski)19. Phrasal Verb Idioms and the Normative Concept of the Interlanguage Hypothesis - Przemysław Olejniczak

This is an impressive collection of serious thought and critical analysis ranging from broad issues and their implications to more specific problems. The papers are firmly grounded in significant previous research and they present good summaries of much recent work as well. I found the topics to be intriguing, the research to be rigorous and valuable to the field, and the findings and analyses outlined in the papers as a whole to represent a perspective that is relevant and useful. This is a significant contribution to the field of second language acquisition studies.