and thought-provoking responses of our colleagues, both those supporting our views and those opposing them. In general, we feel that the response articles lend support to our position (stated in detail in MLJ81,3) that conceptual and methodological tensions in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) do exist, and that they indicate that the field is in need of conceptual and methodological broadening and is thus more or less ready and willing to reconsider concepts which have generally been unquestioningly accepted and well established (specifically, the concepts of learner, nonnative, and interlanguage). We sincerely hope that our MLJarticle and its responses will provide a framework upon which fruitful debates may be conducted in the years to come. The critics of our article hold that our views