William Grabe
The Oxford Handbook of Applied Linguistics (2 ed.)
Edited by Robert B. Kaplan
Print Publication Date: Sep 2010
Subject: Linguistics, Applied LinguisticsOnline Publication Date: Sep 2012
DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195384253.013.0002
First, under the umbrella of applied linguistics, research in language teaching, language learning, and teacher education is now placing considerable emphasis on notions of language awareness, attention and learning, “focus on forms” for language learning, learning from dialogic interactions, patterns of teacher-student interaction, task-based learning, content-based learning, and teacher as researcher through action research.
Research in language learning has shifted in recent years toward a focus on information processing, the importance of more general cognitive learning principles, the emergence of language ability from extended meaningful exposures and relevant practice, and the awareness of how language is used and the (p. 38) functions that it serves (Doughty and Long, 2003; N. Ellis, 2007; Robinson and Ellis, 2008; Tomasello, 2003; VanPatten and Williams, 2007).
Instructional research and curricular issues have centered on task-based learning, content-based learning, strategies-based instruction, and a return to learning centered on specific language skills (Cohen and Macaro, 2007; elsewhere in this volume; Long and Doughty, 2009; McGroarty et al., 2004; Samuda and Bygate, 2008).
Language teacher development has also moved in new directions. Widdowson 1998) has argued forcefully that certain communicative orientations, with a pervasive emphasis on natural language input and authenticity, may be misinterpreting the real purpose of the language classroom context and ignoring effective frameworks for language teaching. He has also persuasively argued that applied linguists must support teachers throughout their mediation with all aspects of Hymes's notion of communicative competence, balancing language understanding so that it combines grammaticality, appropriateness, feasibility, and examples from the attested (Widdowson, 2000).
A further emphasis for language teacher education has been the move to engaging teachers in the practice of action research. The trend to train teachers as reflective practitioners inquiring into the effectiveness of teaching and learning in local classroom settings will increase in the coming decade.
A second emphasis that has taken hold in discussions among applied linguists themselves is the role for critical studies; this term covers critical awareness, critical discourse analysis, critical pedagogy, student rights, critical assessment practices, and ethics in language assessment (and language teaching; Davies, 1999; Fairclough, 1995a; McNamara, 1998; McNamara and Roever, 2006; Pennycook, 2001; van Lier, 1997).
At the same time, there are a number of criticisms of this general approach and its impact on more mainstream applied linguistics that highlights weaknesses in much of the critical studies theorizing (Seidlhofer, 2003; Widdowson, 2004). At present, the notion of critical studies also constitutes an emphasis that has not demonstrated strong applications in support of those who are experiencing “language problems” of various types. The coming decade will undoubtedly continue this debate.
A third emphasis is on language uses in academic, disciplinary, and professional settings (Biber, 2006b; elsewhere in this volume; Connor and Upton, 2004a; Swales, 2004). This research examines ways in which language is used by participants and in texts in various academic, professional, and occupational settings. It also emphasizes how language can act as a gatekeeping mechanism or can create unfair obstacles for those who are not aware of appropriate discourse rules and expectations. In academic settings, the key issue lies in understanding how genre and register expectations form the basis for successfully negotiating academic work (Hyland, 2004a, 2008; A. M. Johns, 2002; Swales, 2004). Analyses of language use in various professional settings are described in Gibbons 2004), Grabe 2004), Master (2005), and McGroarty et al. 2003). More specific to English for specific purposes (ESP), Swales 2000) and Widdowson (2004) provide relevant overviews.
A fourth emphasis centers on descriptive (usually discourse) analyses of language in real settings and the possible application of analyses in corpus linguistics, (p. 39) register variation, and genre variation. A breakthrough application of corpus linguistics remains the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (Biber et al., 1999). It is based entirely on attested occurrences of language use in a very large corpus of English. The key, though, lies not in the corpus data themselves but in the innovative analyses and displays that define the uniqueness of the grammar (see also Carter and McCarthy, 2006). Other important applications of corpus linguistics include more teacher- and learner-directed resources (see McCarthy, 2008).
A fifth emphasis in applied linguistics research addresses multilingualism and bilingual interaction in school, community, and work and in professional settings or policy issues at regional and national levels. Because the majority of people in the world are to some extent bilingual, and because this bilingualism is associated with the need to negotiate life situations with other cultural and language groups, this area of research is fundamental to applied linguistics concerns. Multilingualism covers issues in bilingual education, migrations of groups of people to new language settings, equity and fairness in social services, and language policies related to multiple language use (or the restriction thereof). Key issues are addressed in Baker 2006), Brisk (2005), McGroarty et al. (2003, 2006), and van Els 2005).
A sixth emphasis focuses on the changing discussion in language testing and assessment. During the past decade, the field of language assessment has taken on a number of important issues and topics that have ramifications for applied linguists more generally. Validity remains a major theme for language testers, and it has been powerfully reinterpreted over the last 10 years (Chapelle, Enright, and Jamieson, 2008; Kane, 2006). In its newer interpretation, validity has strong implications for all areas of applied linguistic research and data collection and is not merely an issue for assessment practices (Chapelle, 1999). An additional major shift in language assessment with significant implications for applied linguistics more generally is the greater emphasis being given to assessment for learning (sometimes discussed as formative assessment).
The goals for assessment have shifted from assessing what students can do at a given moment to using assessment as a way to improve learning effectiveness on an ongoing basis. The goal is to see continuous learner assessment for learning purposes. This trend is likely to grow considerably in the coming decade (Black et al., 2004; Davison, 2007; Grabe, 2009; Rea-Dickins, 2006; Wiliam and Thompson, 2007). More generally, emphases on technology applications, ethics in assessment, innovative research methodologies, the roles of standardized assessment, standards for professionalism, and critical language testing are all reshaping language assessment and, by extension, applied linguistics.
...
Conclusion
The coming decade of research and inquiry in applied linguistics will continue the lines of investigation noted in the second and third sections of this chapter. Applied linguists will need to know more about computer technologies, statistical applications, socio-cultural influences on research, and new ways to analyze language data.
Testing and assessment issues will not be limited to testing applications but will also have a much greater influence on other areas of applied linguistics research. Issues such as validity, fairness, and ethics will extend into other area of applied linguistics. These issues will also lead to continued discussions on the most appropriate research methods in different settings.
Additionally, applied linguistics will direct more attention to issues of motivation, attitudes, and affect because those factors potentially influence many language-based problems. Similarly, learning theories (as discussed and debated in educational and cognitive psychology) will become a more central concern in language learning and teaching.
Finally, neurolinguistic research will undoubtedly open up new ways to think about language learning, language teaching, and the ways in which language is used. All of these issues also ensure that applied linguistics will remain essentially interdisciplinary. The resolution of language-based problems in the real world is complex, dynamic, and difficult. It seems only appropriate that applied linguists seek partnerships and collaborative research if these problems are to be addressed in effective ways.
DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195384253.013.0002
Trends and Perspectives in the 1990s and the 2000s
In this section, I only note various developments that have emerged over the last 20 years and that will probably continue to define applied linguistics in the coming decade. The present volume provides the details to expand much of the brief sign posting that this section provides. For much the same reason, I refrain from a long catalog of appropriate references on the assumptions that these ideas will be well-referenced elsewhere (Davies and Elder, 2004b; Grabe, 2004; Hinkel, 2005).First, under the umbrella of applied linguistics, research in language teaching, language learning, and teacher education is now placing considerable emphasis on notions of language awareness, attention and learning, “focus on forms” for language learning, learning from dialogic interactions, patterns of teacher-student interaction, task-based learning, content-based learning, and teacher as researcher through action research.
Research in language learning has shifted in recent years toward a focus on information processing, the importance of more general cognitive learning principles, the emergence of language ability from extended meaningful exposures and relevant practice, and the awareness of how language is used and the (p. 38) functions that it serves (Doughty and Long, 2003; N. Ellis, 2007; Robinson and Ellis, 2008; Tomasello, 2003; VanPatten and Williams, 2007).
Instructional research and curricular issues have centered on task-based learning, content-based learning, strategies-based instruction, and a return to learning centered on specific language skills (Cohen and Macaro, 2007; elsewhere in this volume; Long and Doughty, 2009; McGroarty et al., 2004; Samuda and Bygate, 2008).
Language teacher development has also moved in new directions. Widdowson 1998) has argued forcefully that certain communicative orientations, with a pervasive emphasis on natural language input and authenticity, may be misinterpreting the real purpose of the language classroom context and ignoring effective frameworks for language teaching. He has also persuasively argued that applied linguists must support teachers throughout their mediation with all aspects of Hymes's notion of communicative competence, balancing language understanding so that it combines grammaticality, appropriateness, feasibility, and examples from the attested (Widdowson, 2000).
A further emphasis for language teacher education has been the move to engaging teachers in the practice of action research. The trend to train teachers as reflective practitioners inquiring into the effectiveness of teaching and learning in local classroom settings will increase in the coming decade.
A second emphasis that has taken hold in discussions among applied linguists themselves is the role for critical studies; this term covers critical awareness, critical discourse analysis, critical pedagogy, student rights, critical assessment practices, and ethics in language assessment (and language teaching; Davies, 1999; Fairclough, 1995a; McNamara, 1998; McNamara and Roever, 2006; Pennycook, 2001; van Lier, 1997).
At the same time, there are a number of criticisms of this general approach and its impact on more mainstream applied linguistics that highlights weaknesses in much of the critical studies theorizing (Seidlhofer, 2003; Widdowson, 2004). At present, the notion of critical studies also constitutes an emphasis that has not demonstrated strong applications in support of those who are experiencing “language problems” of various types. The coming decade will undoubtedly continue this debate.
A third emphasis is on language uses in academic, disciplinary, and professional settings (Biber, 2006b; elsewhere in this volume; Connor and Upton, 2004a; Swales, 2004). This research examines ways in which language is used by participants and in texts in various academic, professional, and occupational settings. It also emphasizes how language can act as a gatekeeping mechanism or can create unfair obstacles for those who are not aware of appropriate discourse rules and expectations. In academic settings, the key issue lies in understanding how genre and register expectations form the basis for successfully negotiating academic work (Hyland, 2004a, 2008; A. M. Johns, 2002; Swales, 2004). Analyses of language use in various professional settings are described in Gibbons 2004), Grabe 2004), Master (2005), and McGroarty et al. 2003). More specific to English for specific purposes (ESP), Swales 2000) and Widdowson (2004) provide relevant overviews.
A fourth emphasis centers on descriptive (usually discourse) analyses of language in real settings and the possible application of analyses in corpus linguistics, (p. 39) register variation, and genre variation. A breakthrough application of corpus linguistics remains the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (Biber et al., 1999). It is based entirely on attested occurrences of language use in a very large corpus of English. The key, though, lies not in the corpus data themselves but in the innovative analyses and displays that define the uniqueness of the grammar (see also Carter and McCarthy, 2006). Other important applications of corpus linguistics include more teacher- and learner-directed resources (see McCarthy, 2008).
A fifth emphasis in applied linguistics research addresses multilingualism and bilingual interaction in school, community, and work and in professional settings or policy issues at regional and national levels. Because the majority of people in the world are to some extent bilingual, and because this bilingualism is associated with the need to negotiate life situations with other cultural and language groups, this area of research is fundamental to applied linguistics concerns. Multilingualism covers issues in bilingual education, migrations of groups of people to new language settings, equity and fairness in social services, and language policies related to multiple language use (or the restriction thereof). Key issues are addressed in Baker 2006), Brisk (2005), McGroarty et al. (2003, 2006), and van Els 2005).
A sixth emphasis focuses on the changing discussion in language testing and assessment. During the past decade, the field of language assessment has taken on a number of important issues and topics that have ramifications for applied linguists more generally. Validity remains a major theme for language testers, and it has been powerfully reinterpreted over the last 10 years (Chapelle, Enright, and Jamieson, 2008; Kane, 2006). In its newer interpretation, validity has strong implications for all areas of applied linguistic research and data collection and is not merely an issue for assessment practices (Chapelle, 1999). An additional major shift in language assessment with significant implications for applied linguistics more generally is the greater emphasis being given to assessment for learning (sometimes discussed as formative assessment).
The goals for assessment have shifted from assessing what students can do at a given moment to using assessment as a way to improve learning effectiveness on an ongoing basis. The goal is to see continuous learner assessment for learning purposes. This trend is likely to grow considerably in the coming decade (Black et al., 2004; Davison, 2007; Grabe, 2009; Rea-Dickins, 2006; Wiliam and Thompson, 2007). More generally, emphases on technology applications, ethics in assessment, innovative research methodologies, the roles of standardized assessment, standards for professionalism, and critical language testing are all reshaping language assessment and, by extension, applied linguistics.
...
Conclusion
The coming decade of research and inquiry in applied linguistics will continue the lines of investigation noted in the second and third sections of this chapter. Applied linguists will need to know more about computer technologies, statistical applications, socio-cultural influences on research, and new ways to analyze language data.
Testing and assessment issues will not be limited to testing applications but will also have a much greater influence on other areas of applied linguistics research. Issues such as validity, fairness, and ethics will extend into other area of applied linguistics. These issues will also lead to continued discussions on the most appropriate research methods in different settings.
Additionally, applied linguistics will direct more attention to issues of motivation, attitudes, and affect because those factors potentially influence many language-based problems. Similarly, learning theories (as discussed and debated in educational and cognitive psychology) will become a more central concern in language learning and teaching.
Finally, neurolinguistic research will undoubtedly open up new ways to think about language learning, language teaching, and the ways in which language is used. All of these issues also ensure that applied linguistics will remain essentially interdisciplinary. The resolution of language-based problems in the real world is complex, dynamic, and difficult. It seems only appropriate that applied linguists seek partnerships and collaborative research if these problems are to be addressed in effective ways.
Over the years, the term applied linguistics has been defined and interpreted in a number of different ways, and I continue that exploration in this overview. In the 1950s, the term was commonly meant to reflect the insights of structural and functional linguists that could be applied directly to second language teaching and also in some cases to first language (L1) literacy and language arts issues as well. In the 1960s, the term continued to be associated with the application of linguistics to language teaching and related practical language issues (Corder, 1973; Halliday, McIntosh, and Strevens, 1964; Rivers, 1968a; 1968b). At the same time, applied linguists became involved in matters of language assessment, language policies, and the new field of second language acquisition (SLA), focusing on learning, rather than on teaching (Ortega, 2009). So, by the late 1960s, one saw both a reinforcement of the centrality of second language teaching as applied linguistics, as well as an expansion into other realms of language use. In this respect, applied linguistics began to emerge as a genuine language-centered problem-solving enterprise (see Davies, 1999a).
In the 1970s, the broadening of the field of applied linguistics continued, accompanied by more overt specification of its role as a discipline that addresses real-world (p. 35) language-based problems. Although the focus on language teaching remained central to the discipline, it additionally took into its domain the growing subfields of language assessment, SLA, L2 literacy, multilingualism, language-minority rights, language policy and planning, and language teacher training (Kaplan, 1980; Widdowson, 1979/1984). The notion that applied linguistics is driven first by real-world language problems rather than by theoretical explorations of internalized language knowledge and (L1) language development is largely what set the field apart from both formal linguistics and later from sociolinguistics, with its own emphasis on language description of social variation in language use (typically minus the application to language problems).
This separation has had four major consequences:
- The recognition of social situated contexts for inquiry and exploration and thus an increase in the importance of needs analysis and variable solutions in differing local contexts
- The need to see language as functional and discourse based, thus the reemergence of systemic and descriptive linguistics* as resources for problem solving, particularly in North American contexts
- The recognition that no single discipline can provide all the tools and resources to address language-based real-world problems
- The need to recognize and apply a wide range of research tools and methodologies to address locally situated language problems
- Descriptive Linguistics
Linguistics - the scientific study of language, and it involves an analysis of language form, language meaning, and language in context.
In the study of language, description or descriptive linguistics is the work of objectively analyzing and describing how language is actually used (or how it was used in the past) by a group of people in a speech community.
As English-linguist Larry Andrews describes it, descriptive grammar is the linguistic approach that studies what a language is like, as opposed to prescriptive grammar, which declares what a language should be like.[7]
In other words, descriptive grammarians focus analysis on how all sorts of people in all sorts of environments, usually in more casual, everyday settings, communicate, while prescriptive grammarians focus on the grammatical rules and structures predetermined by linguistic registers and figures of power for those who are under the control of said authorities to use.
An example Andrews uses in his book is "fewer than" vs "less than".[8]
A descriptive grammarian would state that both statements are correct, as long as the receiver of the message can understand the meaning behind the statement.
A prescriptive grammarian, on the other hand, would analyze the rules and conventions behind the statements made and determine which statement is correct according to those rules.
Andrews also believes that although the majority of linguists would be descriptive grammarians, the majority of public school teachers tend to be prescriptive.
These trends took hold and evolved during the 1980s as major points of departure from an earlier, no longer appropriate, “linguistics applied” perspective (cf. Davies and Elder, 2004b). The central issue remained the need to address language issues and problems as they occur in the real world.
Of course, because language is central to all communication, and because many language issues in the real world are particularly complex and long-standing, the emerging field has not simply been reactive, but rather, has been and still is, fluid and dynamic in its evolution (cf. Brumfit, 2004; Bygate, 2005; Grabe, 2004; Seidlhofer, 2003; Widdowson, 2005, 2006).
Thus, definitions of applied linguistics in the 1980s emphasized both the range of issues addressed and the types of disciplinary resources used in order to work on language problems (Grabe and Kaplan, 1991; Kaplan, 1980). In the 1980s, applied linguistics truly extended in a systematic way beyond language teaching and language learning issues to encompass language assessment, language policy and planning, language use issues in professional settings, translation, lexicography, bilingualism and multilingualism, language and technology, and corpus linguistics (which continues to hold more interest for applied linguists than for formal linguists). These extensions are well documented in the first 10 years of the journals AILA Review, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, and International Journal of Applied Linguistics, among others. (See Kaplan, elsewhere in this volume, for a detailed discussion.)
By the beginning of the 1990s, a common trend was emerging to view applied linguistics as incorporating many subfields and drawing on many supporting (p. 36) disciplines in addition to linguistics (e.g., anthropology; education; English studies—including composition, rhetoric, and literary studies; modern languages; policy studies; political sciences; psychology; public administration; and sociology). Combined with these two foundations (subfields and supporting disciplines) was the view of applied linguistics as problem driven and real-world based rather than theory driven and disconnected from real language use data (Davies, 1999; Kaplan and Widdowson, 1992; Strevens, 1992).
Applied linguistics has evolved still further during the 1990s and 2000s, breaking away from the common framing mechanisms of the 1980s. A parallel coevolution of linguistics itself needs to be commented upon to understand how and why linguistics, broadly defined, remains a core resource for applied linguistics. From the 1960s to the early 1990s, generative linguistics dominated the linguistics landscape. Although other competing formal theories (tagmemics, systemic-functional linguistics, descriptive grammar, and others) were always available, and sociolinguistics claimed language variation, spoken discourse analysis, and social uses of language as descriptive areas of inquiry, Chomskean linguistics, and its offshoots, almost defined linguistics, at least in North America. This situation was especially true for many practicing applied linguists during that time. However, the growing abstractness of generative linguistics, the assumption of a language acquisition device (LAD, an innate language learning mechanism), and the assumption that a theory should be universally applicable to all languages has, for the most part, taken generative linguistics out of the running as a foundation for language knowledge that is relevant and applicable to real-world language uses and real-world language problems.
In its place, applied linguists have been turning back to more cognitive and descriptive approaches to language knowledge (K. de Bot, 2008; Huddleston and Pullum, 2002; Robinson and Ellis, 2008), language explanations that are explicitly driven by attested language uses rather than intuitions (corpus linguistics, descriptive grammars, sociolinguistics; Biber et al., 1999; Carter and McCarthy, 2006), and theories of language representation that have more realistic applicability to the sorts of language issues explored by applied linguists (Doughty and Long, 2003; Kroll and de Groot, 2005; Robinson and Ellis, 2008).
Linguistics, viewed from this larger perspective, is still central to the overwhelming majority of applied linguistic areas of inquiry that are generally recognized as falling under the umbrella discipline of applied linguistics. After all, applied linguists, and training programs for applied linguists, universally recognize that language knowledge of various types is crucial for careful description and analysis of language, language learning, language uses and abuses, language assessment, and so forth.
Applied linguists must draw on knowledge bases of phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and written discourse because they are relevant to an applied linguistics issue, even if a given area of applied linguistics may not draw specifically on this knowledge at all times (e.g., L2 teacher training, language policy and planning). What has changed is the recognition that linguistic foundations do not need to be narrowly prescribed by theoretical fashion; instead, they must be relevant to language description in specific contexts and provide (p. 37) resources that help address language-based problems and issues in real-world contexts.
For applied linguistics research, the shift to discourse analysis, descriptive data analysis, and interpretation of language data in their social/cultural settings all indicate a shift in valuing observable language data over theoretical assumptions about what should count as data (van Lier, 1997). One of the most useful perspectives that has arisen out of this evolution of a more relevant linguistics has been the development of register analysis, genre analysis, and the resource of corpus linguistics as they apply to a wide range of language learning and language use situations (A. M. Johns, 2002; McCarthy, 2008). All of these approaches to linguistic analysis, along with more refined techniques for discourse analysis, are now hallmarks of much applied linguistics research. In fact, many applied linguists have come to see the real-world, problem-based, socially responsive research carried out in applied linguistics as the genuine role for linguistics, with formal linguistics taking a supporting role. As van Lier 1997) notes,
I think that it is the applied linguist who works with language in the real world, who is most likely to have a realistic picture of what language is, and not the theoretical linguist who sifts through several layers of idealization. Furthermore, it may well be the applied linguist who will most advance humankind' understanding of language, provided that he or she is aware that no one has a monopoly on the definitions and conduct of science, theory, language research, and truth. (1997: 103)
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