English Language Teaching in its Social Context

SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING: CONCEPTS AND ISSUES 25also less willing to speak in class, or to engage target language speakers in informal interaction.Gardner and MacIntyre cite many studies which suggest that language anxiety has anegative relationship with learning success, and some others which suggest the opposite, forlearner self-confidence.The learner as social beingThe two perspectives on the learner which we have highlighted so far have concentratedfirst, on universal characteristics, and second, on individual characteristics. But it is alsopossible to view the L2 learner as essentially a social being, and such an interest will lead toconcern with learners’ relationship with the social context, and the structuring of thelearning opportunitics which it makes available. The learning process itself may be viewedas essentially social, and inextricably entangled in L2 use aid L2 interaction. Two majordifferences appear, which distinguish this view of the learner from the last (for the socialpsychological view of the learner which we have just dipped into is also clearly concernedwith the individual learners’ relationship with the ’socio-cultural milieu’ in which learningis taking place).First, interest in the learner as a social being leads to concern with a range of sociallyconstructed dements in the learner’s identity, and their relationship with learning - so class,ethninty, and gender make their appearance as potentially significant for L2 learning research.Second, the relationship between the individual learner and the social context of learning isviewed as dynamic, reflexive and constantly changing. The ‘individual differences’ traditionsaw that relationship as being governed by a bundle of learner traits or characteristics (suchas aptitude, anxiety, etc.), which were relatively fixed and slow to change. More sociallyoriented researchers view motivation, learner anxiety, ctc. as being constantly reconstructedthrough ongoing L2 experience and L2 interaction.Links with social practiceIs second language learning theory ‘useful’ ? Does it havc any immediate practical applicationsin the real world, most obviously in the L2 classroom? In our field, theorists have been andremain divided on this point. Beretta and his colleagues havc argued for ‘pure’ theory-buildingin SLL, uncluttered by requirements for practical application (1993). Van Licr (1 994),Rampton (199%) and others havc argued for a socially engaged perspective, wheretheoretical development is rooted in, and responsive to, social practice, and languageeducation in particular.Yet others have argued that L2 teaching in particular should be guidedsystematically by SLL research findings (e.g. Krashen 1985).This tension has partly been addressed by the emergence of ‘instructed languagelearning’ as a distinct sub-area of research (see recent reviews by Ellis 1994, pp. 561-663;Spada 1997). We think that language teachcrs, who will form an important segment of ourreadership, will themselves want to take stock of the relations between the theories wesurvey, and their own beliefs and experiences in the classroom.They will, in other words,want to make some judgement on the ‘usefulness’ oftheorising in making sense of their ownexperience and their practice, while not necessarily changing it.