Special Issue of the International Journal of Bilingualism 2011

The focus of this special issue is on the measurement of bilingual ability in bilinguals who speak structurally different languages. This issue is of crucial importance for researchers working on almost any topic in bilingualism, for example for studies of bilingual firstlanguage acquisition, language processing in bilinguals, code-switching or on crosslinguistic influence in bilinguals and L2-users. Most researchers working in these areas want to know whether their informants are balanced bilinguals or dominant in one or the other of their languages, as language ability affects , for example, the processes engaged during the planning of utterances (Kroll, Bobb and Wodnieczka (2006, p. 128) and the processes involved in lexical retrieval (Bialystok, Craik and Luk 2008). For these reasons, several researchers have recently called for more detailed information on bilinguals‟ ability in their languages and for tests to measure this