I shall not be updating this blog regularly over the next few weeks, on account of pressing commitments that now require my undivided attention.
I hope to be able to post in response to topical stories, or share news that I find interesting, but I will not be able to do so in a regular, sustained way as I endeavoured to do over the past few months.
Looking forward to engaging with you all in a few weeks.
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How to write a peer review
Notes on writing peer reviews that help editors decide and authors act, and honest thoughts on where AI can, and can’t, responsibly help.
Writing a Literature Review: Three Tasks, Not One
A literature review is not one task but three. Here is how I explain the difference to my students, and how to decide what belongs where.
What Russian Speakers Find Hard About Greek (According to Their Teachers)
In a newly published chapter, Eleni Motsiou and I ask experienced teachers what makes Modern Greek difficult for speakers of Russian. Their answers say as much about how teachers know things as about the two languages.

About me
Achilleas Kostoulas is an applied linguist and language teacher educator at the Department of Primary Education, University of Thessaly, Greece. He holds a PhD and an MA in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages from the University of Manchester, UK and a BA in English Studies from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece.
His research explores a wide range of issues connected with language (teacher) education, including language contact and plurilingualism, linguistic identities and ideologies, language policy and didactics, often using a Complex Dynamic Systems Theory to tease out connections between them. Some of his work in the field includes the research monograph The Intentional Dynamics of TESOL (2021, De Gruyter; with Juup Stelma) and the edited volume Doctoral Study and Getting Published (2025, Emerald; with Richard Fay), as well as numerous other publications.
Achilleas currently contributes to several projects that bring together his long-standing interests in language education, teacher development, and the social dimensions of language learning. As the coordinator of the expert team of AI Lang (Artificial Intelligence in Language Education), an initiative of the European Centre for Modern Languages of the Council of Europe, he works on developing principles and resources to help educators make informed, pedagogically grounded use of AI in their teaching. He also leads the University of Thessaly team of ReaLiTea (Research Literacy of Teachers), a project that supports language teachers in developing the capacity to engage with, and contribute to, educational research. Alongside these, he contributes to LocalLing, a Horizon-funded initiative to preserve and strengthen heritage and minority languages globally.
In addition to the above, Achilleas is the (co)editor-in-chief of the newly established European Journal of Education and Language Review, and welcomes contributions that explore the dynamic intersections between language, education, and society.
About this post
This post was originally written on 4th May 2014, as I was preparing for the submission of my doctoral dissertation. It is retained here for archival purposes.


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