An Introduction to Applied Linguistics

7 INVESTIGATING THE PROBLEMS: THE METHODOLOGY
OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS
Faced with such fundamental problems concerning language learning and teaching,
problems such as how to plan for the optimum starting age for language teaching
in a school or education system, problems such as how to assess language learning
success most validly, and how to know whether or not this is being achieved, applied
linguistics has developed a series of methodological approaches to the collection of
relevant language data. Several of these have been referred to in earlier discussions.
What I propose to do now is to consider four areas of applied linguistics that have
very direct relevance to language learning and language teaching. What ‘relevance’
means here is that for the applied linguist these are areas that in different ways bring
together the language, the learner and the context. The four areas all connect with
what it is that is supposed to be being learned. The four areas are:
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1. Second-language acquisition research: what are the stages of second-language
learning?
2. Language proficiency testing: what are the markers of successful language
learning?
3. Teaching of LSP: what does the learner need to know?
4. Curriculum design: what does the teacher need to know?
In all four of these areas in which applied linguistics has particular relevance to
language teaching and language learning, the thrust of applied linguistic activity is to
extend our knowledge of what it is that the learner is learning: stages, markers, needs,
or plans. But equally the ambition is to determine not only the linguistic evidence –
if that were the case we would be concerned here with linguistics. Instead, in addition
to the evidence from linguistics, the applied linguist is also and equally interested
in the learning and the context. So it is second-language acquisition in context,
language proficiency testing in context, teaching of language varieties in context,
curriculum design in context.
Let us consider second-language acquisition (SLA) first. Here we are less con -
cerned with the very specialised form of SLA research which has developed in the last
decade and which moves one branch of SLA research towards a parallel study with
Child Language Acquisition and therefore is less interested in context than the more
traditional SLA research.
Similarly with language proficiency testing. Here again the linguistics temptation
is to move the enterprise more and more towards a factorial and/or cognitive study
of the mind and its language faculty (Oller 1998), while the applied linguistics
concern is with the delineation of indicators of successful contextual language
learning.
Again with the teaching of language varieties. Here the distinction is perhaps
easier since where linguistics research is towards the separation of language varieties
into discrete codes and/or texts. That is not what applied linguistics is interested in.
For two reasons: first, because uncontextualised varieties are essentially uninteresting
for a study of language in use; second, because second-language learn ing takes place
in context and therefore it is crucial that for teaching purposes the context of their
use should be highlighted.
Curriculum/syllabus design: such activity should for applied linguistics purposes
be context sensitive. A completely generalised curriculum would be too abstract to
be effective.
In all cases therefore the applied linguist attempts to bring together the language,
the learner and the situation. That is the challenge and that is the value of applied
linguistics to language teaching and language learning. But there is another aspect
too and that is the role of the applied linguist as critic. Here I am not thinking so
much of the critical applied linguistics that we sketched in Chapter 2 and return to
in Chapter 7. Rather I am thinking more traditionally of the proper role of the
academic which is always and everywhere to be sceptical.
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