English Language Teaching in its Social Context
English Language Teaching in its Social Context
English Language Teaching in its Social Context
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SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION 6945678910111213of enquiry.The study of language transfer, for example, is obviously of central importancefor understand<strong>in</strong>g L2 acquisition, the goal of SLA.Other factors to do with the relative status of pure research (i.e. research directedexclusively at the creation of technical knowledge) as opposed to applied research (i.e.research directed at address<strong>in</strong>g practical issues) <strong>in</strong> the university sett<strong>in</strong>gs <strong>in</strong> whichresearchers typically work may also have contributed to the dim<strong>in</strong>ish<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong>terest <strong>in</strong> add<strong>in</strong>gapplication sections to published papers.Accord<strong>in</strong>g to the positivist view of the relationship between research and languagepedagogy, research provides technical knowledge which teachers use <strong>in</strong> mak<strong>in</strong>g decisionsabout what and how to teach. Research prescribes and proscribes what teachers shoulddo.Pica (1 994) does not <strong>in</strong>dicate how her teachers arrived at the questions they asked. Onepossibility is that their questions were <strong>in</strong>fluenced, <strong>in</strong> part at least, by their knowledge ofthe SLA literature and their perception of what this literature claims is important andrelevant. It would be <strong>in</strong>terest<strong>in</strong>g to know what k<strong>in</strong>ds of questions are asked by teacherswho are not familiar with SLA. I am grateful for Jim Lantolf for rais<strong>in</strong>g this po<strong>in</strong>t.It should be notcd that some researchers see a positive disadvantage <strong>in</strong> try<strong>in</strong>g to establishl<strong>in</strong>ks with language pedagogy. Newmeyer and Ste<strong>in</strong>berg (1 988), for example, consider thatone of the reasons for the immaturity of SLA is precisely the felt need to make applications.Sometimes, however, these natural samples of spoken language were supplemented withsamples of elicited language. For example, Cazden, Canc<strong>in</strong>o, Rosansky, and Schumann(1 975) used experimental elicitations by ask<strong>in</strong>g their subjects to imitate or transform amodel utterance.The <strong>in</strong>terpretative tradition of research, wedded to ideas borrowed from critical sociology,has more recently been used to exam<strong>in</strong>e a third type of knowledge -socially constructedknowledge. This post-modern approach has, until recently, not been strongly reflected <strong>in</strong>SLA .Richards (1 991), <strong>in</strong> a survey of 50 MATESOL programmes listed <strong>in</strong> theTESOL directory,found that 29 of them <strong>in</strong>cluded required courses on SLA.There is, of course, a dual application of Lew<strong>in</strong>’s model of action research to teach<strong>in</strong>g. Oneis that researchers <strong>in</strong>terested <strong>in</strong> chang<strong>in</strong>g classroom practices need to work with teacherswith a similar <strong>in</strong>terest <strong>in</strong> research<strong>in</strong>g change.The other is that teachers need to work withlearners <strong>in</strong> negotiat<strong>in</strong>g the activities they will engage <strong>in</strong>. The latter application is reflected<strong>in</strong> the idea of a process syllabus (Breen 1984), accord<strong>in</strong>g to which the content, methodology,and methods of evaluation for a language course are established jo<strong>in</strong>tly by teacherand students as the course takes place.To the best of my knowledge, however, proponentsof the process syllabus have not made direct l<strong>in</strong>ks between their ideas and those of Lew<strong>in</strong>.Markee’s (1 994b) study exam<strong>in</strong>ed task-based language teach<strong>in</strong>g, which, as Markee po<strong>in</strong>tsout, has been <strong>in</strong>fluenced by psychol<strong>in</strong>guistic theories of L2 learn<strong>in</strong>g.It should be clear from this that the SLA researcher and the applied l<strong>in</strong>guist can be one andthe same person. Indeed, many SLA researchers (myself <strong>in</strong>cluded) would considcrthemselves applied l<strong>in</strong>guists. It should be equally clear that the two roles need notbe related; there are many SLA researchers who are not applied l<strong>in</strong>guists. There are alsosome SLA researchers with no foundation <strong>in</strong> language pedagogy who engage <strong>in</strong> ‘SLAapplied’.ReferencesAdelman, C. (1 993) ‘Kurt Lew<strong>in</strong> and the orig<strong>in</strong>s of actions research’, EducationalAction Research1 : 7-24.