Acknowledgements

Many people have helped in the process of turning this Festschrift from a long overdue vision into a reality, and we as the book editors are extremely pleased and grateful and would like to formally acknowledge our sincere gratitude to them all.

Without doubts, our first and utmost thanks go to our contributing chapter authors, for having accepted our invitation in the very first place (back in late 2016). It then became very obvious that right after accepting the invitation, they had put aside their other writing commitments and immediately embarked on their chapter for this volume (as some of our authors had actually submitted their first draft to us in only two weeks’ time after the book proposal was accepted!). What had equally struck us editors as the most impressive was their amazing efficiency in producing such high-quality chapters within such a short time. Though we sometimes did feel guilty for making them have to wait so long before the book can be produced (in order to schedule its publication on 5 June 2019 exactly to mark Peter’s 75th Birthday), it was very exciting and reassuring to have received their chapters in hand so early and able to read them before sending out for external reviews. Indeed, we have been so blessed to have assembled such a professional and devoted stellar team of contributors who had stayed on course with us from the very beginning so firmly and willing to go through the many rounds of time- and energy-consuming procedures with us during the internal and external reviews and revisions process. Frankly, a lengthy and enduring book project like this usually involves so many unexpected scenarios and uncertainties along the way before it can be finalized and completed in the end. For this reason, we truly believe that Peter, as well as all our other readers of this book, will appreciate our authors’ considerable efforts, extreme efficiency, and great patience as much as we do.

Our sincere thanks also go to the internal (who are also authors themselves, such as Gavin Bui, Brian MacWhinney) and external reviewers who have generously lent us their precious time and great efforts to reading and commenting on the chapters included in this volume. They have included, in alphabetical order, Agurtzane Azcarai, Maria del Pilar Garcia Mayo, Ann-Marie Hunter, Taguhi Sahakyan, Ema Ushioda, Zhan (Jan) Wang, and Clare Wright. Needless to say, we are very impressed by and grateful for the reviewers’ constructive comments, their enthusiasm, expertise, care, and generous help, which have helped improve the quality of this volume.

Finally, we are enormously grateful to the three series editors of John Benjamins’ Task-based Language Teaching: Issues, Research and Practice series, namely, Martin Bygate, John M. Norris, and Kris Van den Branden, first for their agreement to include this festschrift in the reputable TBLT series in the first very place (which we believe is the first of its kind in the same series). Then, we wish to acknowledge our great indebtedness to all three of them for their enormous support at later stages, for their extremely detailed and constructive comments on the individual chapters, and their valuable suggestions and guidance to us editors for all aspects of the editorial process. It has been such a great honour to have this Festschrift published in their highly-acclaimed series in both TBLT and applied linguistics and we feel even more fortunate and grateful to have them on board to help ensure the top quality of this Festschrift (as in Martin’s own words, “that lives up to the very high academic standard that Peter upholds!”).

Last but not the least, we would also like to thank Kees Vaes at John Benjamins’ Editorial Office whose support and coordination have first remained mostly behind the curtains (during the preparation and writing stages) but then gradually emerged to the surface (copy-editing and typesetting) and finally became very prominent thereafter (in promoting and marketing the book to our readers around the world!). On an additional note, Chapter One first appeared in Ellis, R. (2018). Reflections on Task-based Language Learning. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. The editors, the author, and the publisher are grateful to Multilingual Matters for permission to reproduce a revised version here.

Thank you all!