My first Announcement as General Editor is devoted to a heartfelt farewell to Nick C. Ellis, whose last year as General Editor was 2020. His decision to turn to other endeavors in life was made prior to the global pandemic that has upended our lives. However, his official last event as General Editor took place on the heel of the COVID‐19 outbreak, in a 5‐hour virtual Board Annual Meeting marathon he led on April 4, 2020. As General Editor, unfailingly year after year for 14 years, he gathered the Board of Directors and editorial team in person in Ann Arbor. During these meetings, he inspired us to do our best work for the journal and the field. The meeting in 2020 seemed unreal—both because it was virtual, and because it marked Nick's closing off of what has been a most impactful and selfless service to Language Learning for over two decades.

Professor Nick C. Ellis has had the kind of distinguished career that only few scholars ever achieve. He received his PhD in cognitive psychology in 1978 and went on to have an exemplary research trajectory as a cognitive psychologist for 15 years, publishing on first‐language reading and dyslexia topics in flagship journals such as Journal of Research in Reading, British Journal of Psychology, Dyslexia Review, and Cognition. In the early 1990s, he turned his attention to the field of second language acquisition, making it his purpose to introduce the research community to non‐Cartesian cognitive science, including usage‐based linguistics, emergentism, and implicit, associative, and statistical learning. His early landmark publications after this reorientation included an edited collection on Implicit and Explicit Learning of Languages in 1994 and his authoritative reviews in Studies in Second Language Acquisition in 1996 and Language Learning in 1998, which then culminated in his 2002 target article in Studies in Second Language Acquisition entitled “Frequency effects in language processing: A review with implications for theories of implicit and explicit language acquisition,” and followed by open peer commentaries. This remains a seminal reading and one of his most cited publications.

It was between these intellectually critical years of 1998 and 2002 that Nick served as Journal Editor of Language Learning. (Around the same time, I had the tremendous fortune to first meet him, as he was the editor of the meta‐analysis of L2 instruction John Norris and I published, still as doctoral students, in Language Learning in 2000.) At the end of his 5‐year Journal Editor term, he stepped into a 5‐year term as Member of the Board of Directors. In 2004, Nick left his native and beloved Wales and relocated to the United States, where he accepted a dual appointment at the University of Michigan as Professor in the Department of Psychology and Research Scientist at the English Language Institute. In 2006, he was recruited by Alexander (Shonny) Guiora to be his successor in the role of General Editor. Himself a professor of psychology and linguistics at Michigan, Shonny had served Language Learning for 28 years, starting as Journal Editor in 1978, and then as General Editor until 2006. The journal had been founded at the University of Michigan in 1948, and under Shonny's leadership, it had grown into a flagship destination for the best research on language learning. Shonny's entrepreneurial genius also led him to create the Language Learning Research Club as a learned society with a philanthropic mission: to give any surpluses generated by Language Learning back to the field through initiatives that promote research and education, such as grants and scholarships.

In his 22 years leading Language Learning, Professor Ellis has multiplied the excellence of the journal exponentially. Two values have guided him in his service: empirical rigor and material support of research, particularly by junior scholars. Through consultative deliberation, he has chosen devoted Board members and outstanding cadres of Journal Editors and Associate Editors, who could embody and help carry out these values. In terms of empirical rigor, he has continually sought to spearhead journal policies that propel disciplinary improvements regarding statistical reform, replicability, and open research practices. For example, in 2000, Language Learning became the first journal in the field of the language sciences to require the reporting of effect sizes; in 2016, it was the first to begin awarding open science badges; in 2018, it launched Registered Reports as an article category; and since 2020, it requires the submission of full materials for peer review. Such forward‐looking policies in the quest for empirical rigor were recognized in 2020 by the Center for Open Science with a TOP score of 11 to Language Learning. TOP scores rate the transparency, reproducibility, and openness of a journal, and a score of 11 is as high as, for example, that attained by Nature. In terms of material support for research, under Professor Ellis's 15‐year service as General Editor, the Grants Program of the Language Learning Research Club has evolved into the most substantial source of scholarly support for the field given by a nonprofit, nongovernmental entity. It has supported early career scholars through the Small Grants scheme since 2000 and doctoral dissertators through the Dissertation Grants scheme since 2004. And every year since 2006, it has also supported the American Association for Applied Linguistics and the European Second Language Association with funding for Roundtables at their annual conferences.

The demands of leading Language Learning to ever new heights of excellence over 22 years are enormous. Yet Prof. Ellis's own record of scholarship has continued to soar decade after decade, always including single‐authored work as well as work done with long‐term collaborators and with junior researchers. He has inspired others to work—and do better work—on language learning by harvesting the lenses of corpus and computational linguistics, psycholinguistics, complex adaptive systems, and network science.

Professor Nick C. Ellis's service to Language Learning has been creative, generative, and indefatigable, and his contributions have not only benefited the journal but also changed the entire field. I speak for myself personally, and for all Members of the Board of Directors and all Editors of Language Learning, past and present, when I say we feel privileged to have worked with Nick. As he once put it, “we have been ship‐mates in the fast currents and shifting seas of academic publishing” … and what a pleasure it has been sailing with him! He has been our leader, our mentor, our friend, and our best role model. We are forever grateful, and we wish him well in his new life adventures!

我作为总编辑的第一份公告专门告别尼克·C·埃利斯（Nick C. Ellis），他去年担任总编辑的那年是2020年。他决定转向生活的其他努力是在全球大流行改变了我们的生活之前做出的。但是，他作为总编辑的最后一次正式活动是在COVID-19爆发后的2020年4月4日举行的为时5小时的虚拟董事会年度会议马拉松比赛中举行的。 ，他亲自在安娜堡（Ann Arbor）聚集了董事会和编辑团队。在这些会议中，他启发了我们在期刊和该领域中尽力而为。2020年的会议似乎是虚幻的，这既是因为它是虚拟的，又是因为它标志着Nick退出了对语言学习最有影响力和无私的服务 超过二十年。

尼克·C·埃利斯（Nick C. Ellis）教授拥有杰出的职业，只有很少的学者能做到。他于1978年获得认知心理学博士学位，并以认知心理学家的身份发展了15年的典型研究轨迹，在诸如《研究杂志》，《英国心理学杂志》等旗舰期刊上发表了第一语言阅读和阅读障碍的专题文章。，诵读困难的复习与认知。在1990年代初，他将注意力转向了第二语言习得领域，其目的是向研究界介绍非笛卡尔认知科学，包括基于使用的语言学，紧急状态以及隐式，联想和统计学习。在重新定位之后，他的早期地标性出版物包括1994年《语言的内隐和外显学习》的编辑集，以及他在1996年的《第二语言习得研究》和1998年的《语言学习》中的权威评论，然后在2002年的《第二语言研究》目标文章中达到高潮。语言习得题为“语言处理中的频率效应：对隐式和显式语言习得理论的启示”，其后是开放式同行评注。这仍然是开创性的读物，也是他引用次数最多的出版物之一。

在1998年至2002年这两个智力上至关重要的年份之间，Nick担任《语言学习》杂志的编辑。（大约在同一时间，我有幸第一次见到他，因为他是L2指令元分析的编辑，约翰·诺里斯（John Norris），我还是博士生，在《语言学习》上发表在2000年。）在他的5年期刊编辑任期结束时，他进入了5年任董事会成员。2004年，尼克离开了家乡而备受喜爱的威尔士，搬到美国，在那里他接受了密歇根大学的双重任命，担任英语学院心理学和研究科学家的教授。2006年，他被亚历山大（Shonny）吉奥拉（Alexander（Shonny）Guiora）聘为继任总编辑。Shonny自己是密歇根州的心理学和语言学教授，曾任职于语言学习从1978年开始担任期刊编辑，到2006年一直担任总编辑长达28年。该期刊于1948年在密歇根大学成立，在顺尼的领导下，已成长为进行最佳语言研究的旗舰目的地学习。Shonny的企业家才华也促使他创建了一个以慈善为使命的博学社会：语言学习研究俱乐部：通过促进研究和教育的举措（例如赠款和奖学金），将Language Learning产生的任何盈余返还给该领域。

Ellis教授在22年的领先语言学习生涯中，成倍地提高了该期刊的卓越水平。他的服务有两个价值观：经验上的严谨和研究的物质支持，特别是初级学者的研究。通过协商审议，他选出了专门的董事会成员以及期刊编辑和副编辑的优秀干部，他们可以体现并帮助实现这些价值观。在经验上严谨方面，他不断寻求带头推动期刊政策，以推动有关统计改革，可复制性和开放研究实践的学科改进。例如，在2000年，语言学习成为语言科学领域第一本要求报告效果大小的期刊；在2016年，它是第一个开始授予开放科学徽章的人；在2018年，它发布了注册报告作为文章类别; 自2020年以来，它要求提交完整的材料供同行评审。寻求经验严谨的此类前瞻性政策在2020年被开放科学中心认可，语言学习的TOP得分为11 。TOP评分对期刊的透明度，可重复性和开放性进行评分，而11分则与《自然》杂志所获得的评分一样高。在研究的物质支持方面，在埃利斯教授担任15年的总编辑的过程中，语言学习的赠款计划研究俱乐部已发展成为非营利性，非政府实体在该领域提供学术支持的最重要来源。它从2000年开始通过小额资助计划为早期的职业学者提供支持，从2004年开始通过学位论文资助计划为博士学位论文提供支持。从2006年开始，它每年还为美国应用语言学协会和欧洲第二语言协会提供圆桌会议的资助。在他们的年度会议上。

在过去的22年中，将语言学习引领到卓越新高度的需求是巨大的。然而，埃利斯（Ellis）教授的学术成就一直持续数十年飞涨，其中包括单著，长期合作者和初级研究人员所做的工作。他通过收集语料库和计算语言学，心理语言学，复杂的自适应系统和网络科学等方面的启发，启发了其他人在语言学习上工作并做得更好。

尼克·埃利斯（Nick C. Ellis）教授为语言学习提供的服务富有创造力，产生力和长足发展，他的贡献不仅使该杂志受益，而且改变了整个领域。当我说我们很荣幸能与尼克一起工作时，我会亲自为自己，也为所有董事会成员和所有语言学习编辑（过去和现在）讲话。正如他曾经说过的那样，“我们一直是学术出版的潮流和瞬息万变的舰船伙伴”……而与他一起航行真是一种乐趣！他一直是我们的领导者，我们的导师，我们的朋友和我们最好的榜样。我们将永远感激不已，并祝他在新的生活冒险中一切顺利！