WHY DID WE WRITE THIS BOOK?
Susan and David, the Editors of Introducing Applied Linguistics, asked each of our authors why they wrote what they did. This is what they said:
Chapter 1: Three reasons why: Dave Willis
In this chapter I wanted to explore why it is impossible to teach all the various aspects of any language — the best we can do is help learners to learn.
I think as teachers we should learn to trust our learners. Learners are intelligent and incredibly creative. They are so intelligent and creative that they make all sorts of ‘mistakes’ as they think of ways to express what they want to say. They don't have time to wait until they have learned a language before they start using it, so they start making it up for themselves right from the start. This means talking about the past before they can handle past tense forms, asking questions before they have mastered question forms, and so on.
Then they go on to solve problems that baffle even the best grammarians, like when to use the past simple tense and when to use the past perfect. They have to do this for themselves, because, as I try to show in this chapter, grammar and lexis are so complicated and extensive that we simply can't offer anything like a full description or demonstration of how they work.
This ingenuity and creativity on the part of learners are the most important things we have going for us as teachers, and we need to do all we can to encourage them. We should look positively at how much they have managed to express, not demotivate them by focusing on their mistakes. If we accept this, there are three parts to the teacher's job of enabling learners to work things out for themselves. We need to give them lots of opportunities to experience and use language for themselves, both receptively and productively. Secondly we need to encourage them to look at the language they have experienced, and prompt them to think about it for themselves in order to encourage their curiosity and release their creativity. Thirdly we need help them to see patterns in what they have found and to offer useful hints and shortcuts wherever we can.
I try to show in the chapter why we can't describe the whole language for them or teach it bit by bit — hints and shortcuts are the best we can do. Learners have to do the hard work for themselves. So we should get them started, give them lots of encouragement, and then encourage them to get on with it for themselves.
Chapter 2: Vocabulary and collocation: David Oakey
I was very keen to write this chapter because it gave me a chance to write about collocation, one of my favourite areas of vocabulary, in a way which I hope would appeal to anyone interested in studying Applied Linguistics. I wanted to give readers an idea of how fascinating the area can be. Examples of collocation are all around: in conversations, in newspapers, books and on the web. Once you start to notice it, collocation seems fairly straightforward: most native English speakers already know which words ‘sound better’ together. And yet, collocation is in some ways quite a difficult concept to explain. It is hard for native English speakers to explain why some words ‘sound better’ together, and difficult for learners to remember which words are best used together. Also, since most English is now spoken by non-native speakers, it is an interesting question whether this kind of collocation should still be taught to learners.
In my work as a teacher of English for Academic Purposes I have noticed that students who think they know a lot of words still have problems with collocation. Although they think they know the meaning of a word, they find it has a different meaning when it is used in combination with other words, and that this meaning is not always easy to find in the dictionary. I wanted my chapter to give readers a flavour of how different research methodologies can reveal different aspects of collocation, and to show how what you can say about what you find depends on the data you look at and how you look at it.
Chapter 3: Grammatical metaphor: Geoff Thompson
My paper was originally intended to be just a relatively straightforward study of one kind of grammatical metaphor, nominalisation. But as my plans for the article developed, I realised that I could bring together a number of different strands of interest, which would be especially relevant given the aims of the book as a whole. The main focus remained nominalisation. I've been fascinated for a long time by the different ways that speakers and writers may use to talk about the ‘same’ happening, and particularly by the specialised ways of talking that are valued in academic contexts. Compare, for example:
- “When teachers introduce extensive reading, students get more proficient and begin to recognise words automatically.”
- “The introduction of extensive reading leads to enhancement of proficiency and automation of word recognition.”
It's clear that these both describe the same phenomenon, but the second version sounds more formal and ‘academic’ than the first. This is largely because it uses nominalisation: referring to happenings (‘introducing’, ‘getting more’, ‘recognising’) by using nouns, as if they were things (‘introduction’, ‘enhancement’, ‘recognition’). Academic writing has a very strong tendency towards ‘nouniness’, and I'm interested in investigating exactly how and why this shows up in various types of formal text. This linked up with another of my interests: helping students (both native speakers and non-native speakers) to cope with the demands of studying at MA level, especially by helping them to improve their academic writing skills. So I thought it would be fun to look at the writing produced by students on the MA course that I teach on. I decided to explore how far their use of nominalisation seemed to be associated with successful writing (I was pretty sure that there was a close association, but I'd never actually checked systematically). I was hoping that the analysis would give me hard evidence to demonstrate to my students the benefits of getting ‘nouny’. Equally importantly, it would allow me to provide a more precise description of the kinds of nouniness that they should try to develop (since, just like any discourse feature, nominalisation can be overused or wrongly used). And a final, broader aim was to try to offer a model that might be followed by MA students in their own writing. As you will find, or are perhaps already finding, students are placed in a difficult position when they embark on an MA : you are expected to write highly specialised kinds of texts – assignments, projects, and a dissertation – with very few examples that you can draw on to understand exactly what is being demanded of you. You are encouraged to read academic papers, and to model your own work on these; but it can be quite intimidating to be told that you should imitate such sophisticated masterpieces of scholarly endeavour. So, in writing my paper, I tried to put myself as far as possible in the place of an MA student and to write something that I could imagine finding in a (successful) MA dissertation. I am conscious that the text is more condensed than is ideal for this purpose — I didn't have as much space to expand as you will have in your dissertations. But I have deliberately kept the study fairly restricted in scope, and spelt out all the steps of my methodology and discussion, so that I hope it doesn't seem too intimidating (while also not appearing too simple and easy!).
Chapter 4: Conversation analysis in the language classroom: Almut Koester
As someone who started their professional life as a TEFL teacher, I have always been interested in the applications of research to teaching. My research focuses on spoken discourse, and I believe that Conversation Analysis (CA) is an approach to analysing spoken discourse which is particularly relevant for teaching. So, in this chapter, I would like to introduce teachers to some of the basic principles and methods in CA and show how these can be useful in teaching spoken English and ‘conversation skills’.
While we all know how to ‘do’ conversation, some of the structures of very basic things, such as opening and closing conversations, are more complex than we might think. In the same way, EFL students know how to engage in conversation in their own language, but may not easily be able to transfer such knowledge to a second language, especially if there are differences in conversational structures and in how these are realised. I am also hoping to show how examples from real conversations can be used in the classroom to give students realistic and useful models for developing their conversational skills.
Chapter 5: What is communicative language teaching: Juup Stelma
There are two reasons for why I wrote this chapter called ‘what is communicative language teaching’. As a tutor on an MA TESOL course I meet English language teachers from around the world, and a common question I get is: What is communicative language teaching? Trying to respond to this question again and again I have come to understand that there is no straightforward answer. This is especially true if you imagine how communicative language teaching (CLT) may change as it is interpreted by teachers in very different parts of the world. This brings me to the second reason for why I wrote this chapter. There is currently a ‘movement’ within TESOL that says it is inappropriate to use a standard teaching method across different teaching contexts and with different learners. CLT is often a ‘casualty’ of this argument.
This is no surprise as there have been frequent attempts to impose a standard version of CLT in teaching contexts around the world. I wrote the chapter because I think it is a mistake to reject CLT on this basis, and I believe it is a mistake to think that there is such a think as a standard version of CLT. Instead, I think that because communication can be understood in many different ways, communicative language teaching can be, and probably should be, understood differently by teachers working in different contexts around the world. You may say, then, that I wrote the chapter to encourage English language teachers to formulate their own understanding of what communicative language teaching is, thereby saving me the effort of trying to answer a question that they can answer so much better themselves.
Chapter 6: Six propositions in search of a methodology: applying linguistics to task-based learning: Dave Willis and Jane Willis
We have been working and experimenting with task-based learning (TBL) since the early 1980s, exploring its theoretical underpinning and developing our ideas on TBL as a result of other teachers' experiences. We are aware that courses for teachers often include a practical module on TBL, and Jane's first book on TBL A Framework for Task-based learning was intended as a practical handbook, written without explicit references to the theories underpinning task-based approaches. Even now, when we are asked to lead workshops on TBL, we are nearly always asked to keep things practical. As a result, many language teachers remain unaware of the depth and breadth of the theories behind TBL. But these theories are vital if we want to develop our teaching in principled ways.
So we have written this chapter to highlight some of the significant theories that underpin TBL, and to show their relevance to the classroom. We start by looking at six theoretical statements and explore how they relate to learning and teaching a language. Three of these statements (numbers 2, 3 and 6) relate to how students learn, and why they often fail to learn what is ‘taught’. The other statements are to do with the nature of language, its variety and purposefulness, and rest heavily on the work of Michael Halliday and his view of language as a meaning system.
We hope the six propositions will give you useful ways to look at your day to day teaching, different ways to reflect on your lessons and a deeper understanding of how you can help your learners achieve their goals of becoming fluent and confident users of the language. We end the chapter with some practical applications of the theories we have explored, linking theory to practice. And then it is over to you, to enrich your practice by exploring relevant theories for yourself and, hopefully, to experiment with some task-based teaching with your learners.
Chapter 7: Researching motivation: Zoltán Dörnyei
In my chapter I outline a major shift in language learning motivation research that reframed the concept of motivation as part of the learner's self and identity. This change has been brewing in me for quite a while because of two basic observations:
- Along with many other applied linguists, I believe that a foreign language is more than a mere communication code that can be learnt similarly to other academic subjects. Instead, it is also part of the individual's personal ‘core,’ involved in most mental activities and forming an important part of one's identity. Thus, I have become increasingly open to a paradigm that would approach motivation from a whole-person perspective.
- I have been intrigued throughout my whole research career by Robert Gardner's classic concept of ‘integrativeness’, which refers to motivation to learn a foreign language driven by positive attitudes towards members of the other language community and by the desire to communicate with them (e.g. learning Hungarian because one thinks that Hungarians are great and one would like to communicate with them). However, I also noticed that this concept only makes sense in multicultural contexts where there is a realistic opportunity to communicate with L2 speakers, and it is not so relevant in foreign language learning contexts where the L2 is taught as a school subject. Thus, I have been trying to find a broader interpretation of the notion than was originally offered by Gardner.
My new motivation construct has grown out of these considerations and it was also informed by theories of ‘self’ in psychology and by extensive empirical research in Hungary. All this is discussed in detail in the chapter, and I also present data from China and Japan that confirm the basic principles of my approach.
Chapter 8: Learning English in a global society: Chris Kennedy
I have been researching the topic of English in a global context for many years now, and I have always thought that it raised fascinating, relevant and important issues for language teachers. I wanted to write a chapter that would get teachers thinking about how the economic and political forces driving English as a global language affected what happens in their classrooms, their methods, materials and their students. It is a contentious area and I've tried to present both sides of some of the various arguments, for example about the power and influence of native speakers of English, and the emergence of new varieties that ultimately may influence what we teach our learners. I also wanted teachers and their students to become more aware of the English that is all around them even as they walk down a local street, in advertisements, signs and brand names, sometimes being used in new and creative ways. I wanted to encourage them to investigate such examples and ask themselves why they are there. The use of English is never accidental and exploring reasons for the presence of English is a part of the fascination of English as a global language.
Chapter 9: Investigating metaphor and ideology in hard news stories: Kieran O’Halloran
I've researched in the area of language and ideology for some time. The questions of whether language influences thought and if so how are fascinating, constantly debated, and ones that I keep coming back to. Metaphors We Live By (1980) by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson is a classic work in linguistics; it makes the argument that metaphor is not something superficial or ornate but actually influences the way we think about the world.
I've worked in different branches of linguistics where meaning is considered to be dependent on context. On this rather uncontroversial assumption, then metaphorical meaning must be context-dependent too. But, this assumption is largely absent from Metaphors We Live By. An advantage of large corpora is that we can inspect how the meaning of metaphors can vary with context which, in turn, can provide clues about the extent to which they influence thinking, or not, in different contexts. This is how I use large corpora in my chapter.
Chapter 10: Who wrote this? The linguist as detective: Alison Johnson and David Woolls
We are both researchers in Forensic Linguistics and in addition David earns a living as a forensic linguistic and Alison teaches forensic linguistics. We therefore wanted to combine our interests in applying knowledge gained as a result of teaching, researching and working with language on a daily basis in our writing for this book. In keeping with many of the other chapters we take a big topic and deal with a small part of it. Forensic linguistics is too large and diverse a field to explain in a single chapter, but plagiarism (and authorship) is one of the topics that concerns forensic linguists and teachers alike. (You can see what some of the other concerns of forensic linguists are by going to the IAFL homepage at http://www.iafl.org/ or the Birmingham forensic linguistics homepage at http://web.bham.ac.uk/forensic/index.html and also by reading Coulthard and Johnson (2007) — see Johnson biodata). Plagiarism amongst students has been an issue that we have dealt with from time to time, both in terms of detection and prevention, so we talk a bit in our chapter about these issues. It is also an issue that concerns companies in the ‘real world’ and they often seek automatic computational detection solutions; that is what David writes about here, covering some of his experiences of working with these companies and explaining how a linguistic solution can be found. Some of the positive spin-offs of increased screening and detection have been a pleasing reduction in copying and better writing. Our chapter, then, is about how awareness of language in some of the real life situations of work affects the ways in which we write. It also shows how providing analysis and solutions for business and the classroom enhances our knowledge of how language works and therefore shows that applied linguistic research and practical applications of knowledge are mutually enhancing activities. We offer our work as a way of looking at a small sub-field of the large sub-field of forensic linguistics, which is itself a field in applied linguistics. We welcome feedback and questions to our email addresses, which you can find on our webpages.
Chapter 12: Interrogating the concept of stereotypes in intercultural communication: Adrian Holliday
While the issue of culture has for a long time been an interest of mine, being invited to come at it from the point of view of stereotypes was an interesting proposition. Stereotypes is one of those topics that is hard to track down to a particular set of practices or ideas because it is a concept that we all deal with in everyday life. It was lucky that my colleague, Alan Waters, had recently engaged me in a discussion about it; and this gave me a starting point. I did feel that I had a moral obligation to express a particular view, because I do feel that stereotypes do have a negative impact on how we all live with and think about each other. They have been responsible for many of the world's injustices. This is not therefore one of those pieces that provides information that readers can then make up their own minds about. At the same time I did not was to sound narrow minded in my views. This balance between respecting the views of people who disagree with you and yet showing that you disagree with them is always a difficult and sensitive matter in writing.
Chapter 13: Designing a questionnaire: Aileen Bloomer
I was invited to write this chapter as a result of my co-authoring with Professor Alison Wray the second edition of Projects in Linguistics. That booked stemmed from seeing our students know the questions they wanted to ask about language and linguistics but being unsure how to go about the research. That book inevitably is concerned with more research methods than questionnaires but questionnaires have always interested me — partly because they appear so frequently through the letter-box asking for an opinion on whatever topic interests the sender. In many cases, they are impossible to answer for a whole variety of reasons. I hope that this chapter will at the very least enable Applied Language Research students to create questionnaires that their informants can answer easily and informatively in order to provide the researcher with information and data that they can use sensibly.
Chapter 14: Using interview data in case studies: Ruby Macksoud
As a graduate student, one of the most rewarding aspects of my dissertation project was the series of interviews I carried out with practicing ESAP teachers. Those interviews allowed me to interact extensively with the teachers, and as a result of this interaction, I was left with what I felt was a rich understanding of the issues I was interested in. By including in my dissertation excerpts from those interviews, I was also able to make sure the teachers' own voices were part of the finished product, and that added to the meaningfulness of my project.
With this and other similar experiences in mind, I was hoping here to describe the process of using interviews such that readers of this chapter would be able to visualize the process. I decided to write the chapter in the first person perspective, step by step, as though I was guiding the reader through the process of using interview data in case studies from start to finish. For example, I started the chapter with a description of how I found the participants and how I dealt with ethical issues, then I described how I designed the interviews and how I gathered, transcribed, and interpreted the data, and finally, I ended the chapter with the challenges I faced in writing about the interview data. I reasoned that this kind of “think aloud” would be concrete and clear, and it would reflect my own research voice—in the same way that the voices of my research participants were reflected in, and enhanced, the interview data I gathered.
Chapter 15: Transcribing classroom language: Joan Swann
Most of my research has involved the analysis of spoken interaction in one form or another, and I'm interested in the representation of spoken language on the page. In writing a chapter on this topic I wanted to illustrate the kinds of choices researchers need to make. In particular, I wanted to to show that transcription isn't a neutral ‘technology’ — a matter of translating speech into writing. The way you choose to transcribe enables you to see certain things and obscures others. Most obviously, transcriptions affect the type of analysis you are able to do. But they are also ideological, providing socially-significant representations of speech, and therefore speakers.
I wanted to show how transcriptions can represent things other than the spoken word — the communicative potential of nonverbal information such as posture, gesture, gaze etc. This is something I've always found revealing in my own work. I'm fascinated by the subtle and complex ways in which speakers combine different communicative resources, and I wanted to convey some of this interest to readers. Finally, it's easy to adopt existing formats by default, but I hoped to encourage students and researchers to play with different transcriptions, to get to know their affordances and limitations, and to produce their own adaptations or even inventions that others can learn from.
Chapter 16: Using a corpus to study spoken language: Svenja Adolphs
A large proportion of work in the area of corpus linguistics focuses on written texts. Methods and approaches that have been developed to understand patterns across such text collections reflect this focus and are often concerned with analyses at the concordance level. The study of spoken interaction using spoken corpora as an evidence base requires quite a different approach, as meaning is often generated collaboratively between speakers and across turns. In my chapter I have tried to illustrate this shift in focus from the level of concordance to the level of discourse which becomes important when we use a corpus to study spoken language. I also wanted to show the importance of context to the study of discourse. The corpus that I have used in my chapter includes detailed information about the relationship between the speakers, their age group, educational background, what they are doing at the time of recording etc. I have tried to show that patterns in the occurrence of particular words or phrases can often be related to such contextual variables. It seems to me that a major challenge for future research in corpus linguistics and discourse analysis will be to find appropriate ways in which we may record, represent and replay different aspects of context alongside transcribed text. Given the multi-modal, and essentially dynamic, nature of context, it will be interesting to explore how different technologies can help in this endeavour and allow us to develop more contextually sensitive descriptions of language-in-use, and applications based on those descriptions.