The book is a collection of eight multidisciplinary papers whose authors work in different academic fields at the Faculty of Arts, University of Szeged, Hungary. Many of the underlying investigations as well as the editorial work were supported by the LINEE (Languages in a Network of European Excellence) project. The volume introduces the reader to various encounters that emerge, as a result of a cultural flow of people and ideas, in language use, cultural production and identity constructions.

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... These three areas are the guidelines around which the articles of the volume are organized. The book starts with a general introduction by the editor which is followed by three studies in the chapter Language, three studies in the chapter Culture, and two in the last chapter Identity. The introductory chapter provides an outline of the book by describing the main aim of the further works and by connecting them to the overarching theme of the volume. In the first chapter (Language), the first two articles investigate issues concerning the English language learning experiences and English language usage of Hungarian students majoring in English or American Studies at the University of Szeged. The first of these two papers investigates the identity and community constructions of the Hungarian students while using and communicating in English as a foreign language with the help of written and interview data (Peckham). The findings of the study show that some students still consider native-speaker English as a norm for communication; however, students with some outside-of-school experiences realize the changing role of English in Europe and regard the lingua franca variety of English as acceptable for communication as any native variety. The main aim of the second article is to examine student reflections on task-based language teaching (TBLT) and learning (Williams). The author presents the existing foreign language learning culture in Hungary as a traditionally classical humanist one that can be characterized by focusing more on grammatical forms than on communication and by teaching in a rather teacher-fronted style as opposed to TBLT that encourages students to explore, to solve problems and to make decisions. The results show that when students participate in a TBLT class, despite their classical humanist educational background they have favorable responses to this way of teaching and learning. However, the author believes that TBLT is unlikely to be introduced in language learning in Hungary. The third paper of this