As the clock turns quickly towards the new millennium, there is a need to consider where we are now and what lies ahead. Much of our classroom practice has a very long heritage, and draws on ideas shaped in a world very different from the one which we will inhabit in the years to come. It is necessary to explore some of the social and technological changes that we are predicted to experience in this new century and how these may bear on the practice of language teaching. These may include, for example, the increasing effects of so-called processes of 'de-skilling' and 're-skilling', the displacement of national boundaries in favour of 'globalisation' and 'globalisation', and new forms of literacy.
