Vivian Cook is Emeritus Professor, Newcastle University, UK. He has been researching in the fields of second language acquisition and writing systems for over 45 years and was founding President of the European Second Language Association (EUROSLA).

Vivian Cook has taught at Ealing Technical College and North-East London Polytechnic; he now works at the University of Essex After writing EFL course-books, he concentrated on linguistics and language learning in books such as Chomsky’s Universal Grammar and Second Lang¬uage Learning and Language Teaching. His current interests are partly developing the concept of multi-compet¬ence through books such as Portraits of the L2 User and applying it to the design of language teaching materials, partly exploring the English writing system through books and articles. He was founding President of the European Second Language Association (EUROSLA).