about a matter whose complexity drives the search for further insight and deeper knowledge. The perspective adopted in these books helps those who are willing to create educational programmes for the senior population, or those who, in one way or another, want to create workshops on diff erent topics especially for them, raising their awareness to the fact that they are creating off ers made for a very unique age group. This public requires an approach that meets their diverse characteristics,

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... heir accumulated competences and their life paths, aspects that can only be combined in a teaching/learning model grounded in gerontagogy. In this context, the term "gerontagogy" has been used over any other expression originating in gerontology or geragogy. The choice fell on the term gerontagogy because its meaning is closer to the general spirit that permeates the eleven contributions of the anthology Third Age Learners of Foreign Languages, edited by Danuta Gabryś-Barker, which we are analysing here. What does gerontagogy bring as added value in comparison, for example, to educational gerontology or geragogy (even if critical) in the fi eld of foreign languages? Geragogy is etymologically closer to geriatrics, and, therefore, it is possible to glimpse within it some connotations with which the education for older adults would rather not be associated (Lemieux 1999), because of the age range and the diversity of profi les that this age group comprises. In turn, educational gerontology places too much emphasis on ageing (Sáez Carreras 2005). On the other hand, as Sáez Carreras (2005) argues, if the emphasis is more on education and less on the biological-social orientation inherent to educational gerontology, it thus becomes more of a gerontagogical view. As the author further notes, this last perspective claims that the focus should be on the subject of the education, on the person who wants to learn and who, therefore, assumes an active role in the learning process. Contrary to (educational) gerontology, and most probably also to geragogy applied to foreign languages, the object of study of gerontagogy is teaching/ learning, and not specifi cally the age of those involved in the learning process (Lemieux & Sánchez Martínez 2000) . These authors also add that gerontagogy studies the educational practice of people who want to learn as a means to fi nding personal and social fulfi lment. Therefore, the focus is not merely on an educational practice integrated in the ageing process. Sáez Carreras (2005) further points out that, in gerontagogy, education is not the adjective, it is the name. For this author, only this way of looking at education can give it a "transformative" reading, as a process that generates physical, psychological, social and cultural repercussions in Mankind. Gerontagogy should, therefore, be considered as a practice rather than as a discipline and, in turn, the gerontagogue will have to be seen more as a (social) intervenor rather than as a researcher or theoretician (Sánchez Martínez 2003).