Book excerpt: Language centres serve an important role in the development and implementation of language policy and in supporting language teachers. This book describes five language centres, the Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research (London), the European Centre for Modern Languages (Graz), the Regional Language Centre (Singapore), the National Foreign Language Center (NFLC, Washington DC), and the Centre for Applied Linguistics and Languages (CALL, Brisbane). These contrasting centres provide the basis for a discussion of the roles, functions and management of language centres and the challenges facing such centres (and universities in general) arising from tensions between the pursuit of academic excellence and the demands of commercialisation and economic rationalism. The author holds a chair in applied linguistics in Griffith University and has written extensively on language policy and its implementation and on language assessment. He has established and directed three language centres since the mid-1980s, including CALL since 1990, and is an Adjunct Fellow of NFLC.