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Luke Carson is associate professor of English at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. He is author of Consumption and Depression in Gertrude Stein, Louis Zukofsky, and Ezra Pound (1999).

While the word 'threshold' is used in language learning frameworks, a threshold concept from a learning theory perspective refers to a "transformed way of understanding" (Meyer & Land, 2006), that brings with it an ontological shift in the minds of learners. This paper discusses the possibility that the jump from learning a language to learning and using a language in certain contexts may be such a threshold concept in certain EFL contexts. This discussion follows a mapping of the characteristics of threshold concepts onto the act of learning a language for the purpose of communicative competence. This understanding posits that active communication in a foreign language can be both simultaneously more difficult and more meaningful than educators may always recognise. Drawing on what learning theory has discovered about 'troublesome' learning, the discussion provides a reframing of some learner journeys to becoming communicators. This paper discusses this issue from three perspectives. Firstly, it outlines what learning theory and theorists have discovered about threshold concepts. Secondly, it puts forward the notion that in some university contexts (with specific reference to Japanese university EFL contexts), active communication in a second language may be a threshold concept for students who are still second language 'communication novices'. Finally, it discusses some of the curricular, instructional and assessment design implications of this position.

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We conceived of this issue as a chance to reflect on the root of our work as professionals. Because for us "learning to read" is synonymous with "learning to read poetry," we framed our issue with that one generic restriction. We invited our contributors to discuss the idea of "learning to read" with reference either to a critic who has or should have taught us about reading poems, or to a poet or group of poets who involve us in their own reading. It will not be surprising, given a common focus on poetry, that throughout these essays there is a revisiting and revision of the idea of lyric and its various attributes: individuality, originality, subjectivity, and feeling (especially in relation to tradition and convention). What did surprise and delight us were the multiple lines of interconnection between the essays and the character of the story they tell together. Taken as a whole, that story about the fate of lyric poetry at the turn of the twentieth century is rich in the elements of romance: danger, conflict, rescue, hope, and love. In the broadest terms the imperiled object of this romance is the continued writing of poetry itself, a practice beset with dangers, according to these essays, from both within and without. The opening essay, by Ellen Levy, concerns itself with the external threat of the decline of poetry's importance in the culture at large. Levy ascribes that decline specifically to a long "struggle between the arts" in which poetry has ceded its former prominence to the world of visual art. She is principally interested in the work of T. J. Clark and a historical moment that allows him the untroubled claim that, in Levy's paraphrase, "lyric belongs to painting." At the same time, she explores his trouble with the idea of lyric itself and the extent to which poetry can yet claim to have most successfully addressed