Vivian Cook, Newcastle University
If you tell someone you’re an applied linguist, they look at you with bafflement. If you amplify – it’s to do with linguistics – they still look baffled. You know, linguistics the science of language? Ah so you speak lots of languages? Well no, just English. So what do you actually do? Well I look at how people acquire languages and how we can teach them better. At last light begins to dawn and they tell you a story about how badly they were taught French at school.
The problem is that the applied linguists themselves don’t have much clearer ideas about what the subject consists of. They argue over whether it necessarily has anything to do with language teaching or with linguistics and whether it includes the actual description of language. All of these views exist among applied linguists and are reflected in the MA courses available at British universities under the label of applied linguistics.
The language teaching view of applied linguistics parallels TESOL or TEFL, by looking at ways of improving language teaching, backed by a more rigorous study of language. The motivation is that better teaching will be based on a better understanding of language. However in British universities language teaching itself is not highly valued, often carried out by ancillary staff, because it does not lend itself easily to the kind of research publications that university careers now depend upon...
Taken from: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vivian.c/Writings/Shorts/WhatisALl.htm
If you tell someone you’re an applied linguist, they look at you with bafflement. If you amplify – it’s to do with linguistics – they still look baffled. You know, linguistics the science of language? Ah so you speak lots of languages? Well no, just English. So what do you actually do? Well I look at how people acquire languages and how we can teach them better. At last light begins to dawn and they tell you a story about how badly they were taught French at school.
The problem is that the applied linguists themselves don’t have much clearer ideas about what the subject consists of. They argue over whether it necessarily has anything to do with language teaching or with linguistics and whether it includes the actual description of language. All of these views exist among applied linguists and are reflected in the MA courses available at British universities under the label of applied linguistics.
The language teaching view of applied linguistics parallels TESOL or TEFL, by looking at ways of improving language teaching, backed by a more rigorous study of language. The motivation is that better teaching will be based on a better understanding of language. However in British universities language teaching itself is not highly valued, often carried out by ancillary staff, because it does not lend itself easily to the kind of research publications that university careers now depend upon...
Taken from: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vivian.c/Writings/Shorts/WhatisALl.htm
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