Throughout the fifties and sixties the methodology of second-language teaching underwent a radical change in response to new communication needs, and under the influence of structural linguistics and behavioral psychology. Unfortunately, the effort did not produce all of the results expected, and this probably for two reasons: on the one hand, it…

Investigates some of the affinities between the traditions of communicative competence and literacy studies by examining the historical and current use of ethnographic methodology in such studies. Describes how communicative competence theory is "branching out" into communicative approaches to second language pedagogy, mingling both psychological…

After a review of the theoretical context to current research on literacy, consideration is given to aspects of the literacy practices of the Moroccan community in the Ladbroke Grover area of West London. Findings from a study of literacy in its social context in Morocco are cited in the discussion of the West London practices. Emphasis is on the…

Course designers and teachers of English as a second or foreign language need a pedagogical grammar, that is, a collection of linguistic statements about English which specifies the linguistic behaviors that an ESL/EFL learner will need to acquire and which can easily be used in the preparation of materials and lessons. Pedagogical grammars…

Language planning involves decisions of two basic types: those pertaining to language choice and those pertaining to language development. Linguistic theory is needed to evaluate the structural suitability of candidate languages, since both official and national languages must have a high level of standardization as a cultural necessity. On the…

This paper traces the three major developmental strands that converged to contribute to the definition of the applied linguistics field in the Philippines: the institution and capacity-building work supported by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations; the forging of a vibrant consortium among three Filipino institutions of higher education to offer…

Applied linguistics has made major contributions to literacy teaching in recent years, in four general areas. First, second language acquisition is becoming the model for first language literacy teaching in schools through the "whole language approach" to literacy. Second, the field of sociolinguistics has convinced educators that literacy is a…

A review of literature on foreign language testing indicates that the earliest approaches to language assessment were generally uninformed by contemporaneous linguistic and psychological theories and were characterized by a lack of psychometric sophistication. This trend was followed by the development of test instruments that were heavily…

The language or dialect used in a conversation will vary according to the social situation, the identity of the participants, and the conversational topic. Bilinguals will often switch languages to suit the topic or the listener; persons who speak both standard and dialect forms of a language will use the standard in formal conversation and the…

This article describes some of the frustrating obstacles that a scholar researching the field of applied Chicano linguistics is likely to encounter. Good scholarship in this field is found primarily in dissertations. Sources of bad scholarship (i.e., lacking is scholarly rigor) include theses done in colleges of education, articles in teachers'…

Current research supports the notion that language users make both unconscious and conscious choices when accommodating their language for public use, incorporating regional and social distinctions as well as notions of correctness and acceptability. Such decisions occur at the level of communicative competence and become part of the communicative…

In the last 15 years much attention has been devoted to the identification and description of varieties (register and style) of language within the same speech community. The Research Section, Directorate of Studies, Staff Development Branch, Public Service Commission of Canada carried out three TESL-oriented linguistic studies on the…

Development of a typology for linguistic situations has been a continuing concern of sociolinguistic research. Thus far, however, typological studies have served primarily to demonstrate the difficulties involved in such an undertaking rather than producing results of obvious utility. With few exceptions, notably Greenberg 1956 and Pool 1972,…

Papers presented at the symposium of error analysis in Lund, Sweden, in September 1972, approach error analysis specifically in its relation to foreign language teaching and second language learning. Error analysis is defined as having three major aspects: (1) the description of the errors, (2) the explanation of errors by means of contrastive…

Prior to the development of modern sociolinguistics the immediate contribution of linguistics to society as a whole was negligible. Without the further development of sociolinguistics, the situation will not change radically. In order to arrive at a more useful system of linguistics, linguists must realize that this situation does not result…