English Language Teaching in its Social Context

SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION 6945678910111213of enquiry.The study of language transfer, for example, is obviously of central importancefor understanding 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 addressing practical issues) in the university settings in whichresearchers typically work may also have contributed to the diminishing interest in addingapplication sections to published papers.According to the positivist view of the relationship between research and languagepedagogy, research provides technical knowledge which teachers use in making decisionsabout what and how to teach. Research prescribes and proscribes what teachers shoulddo.Pica (1 994) does not indicate how her teachers arrived at the questions they asked. Onepossibility is that their questions were influenced, in part at least, by their knowledge ofthe SLA literature and their perception of what this literature claims is important andrelevant. It would be interesting to know what kinds of questions are asked by teacherswho are not familiar with SLA. I am grateful for Jim Lantolf for raising this point.It should be notcd that some researchers see a positive disadvantage in trying to establishlinks with language pedagogy. Newmeyer and Steinberg (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, Cancino, Rosansky, and Schumann(1 975) used experimental elicitations by asking their subjects to imitate or transform amodel utterance.The interpretative tradition of research, wedded to ideas borrowed from critical sociology,has more recently been used to examine a third type of knowledge -socially constructedknowledge. This post-modern approach has, until recently, not been strongly reflected inSLA .Richards (1 991), in a survey of 50 MATESOL programmes listed in theTESOL directory,found that 29 of them included required courses on SLA.There is, of course, a dual application of Lewin’s model of action research to teaching. Oneis that researchers interested in changing classroom practices need to work with teacherswith a similar interest in researching change.The other is that teachers need to work withlearners in negotiating the activities they will engage in. The latter application is reflectedin the idea of a process syllabus (Breen 1984), according to which the content, methodology,and methods of evaluation for a language course are established jointly by teacherand students as the course takes place.To the best of my knowledge, however, proponentsof the process syllabus have not made direct links between their ideas and those of Lewin.Markee’s (1 994b) study examined task-based language teaching, which, as Markee pointsout, has been influenced by psycholinguistic theories of L2 learning.It should be clear from this that the SLA researcher and the applied linguist can be one andthe same person. Indeed, many SLA researchers (myself included) would considcrthemselves applied linguists. It should be equally clear that the two roles need notbe related; there are many SLA researchers who are not applied linguists. There are alsosome SLA researchers with no foundation in language pedagogy who engage in ‘SLAapplied’.ReferencesAdelman, C. (1 993) ‘Kurt Lewin and the origins of actions research’, EducationalAction Research1 : 7-24.