Numerous studies have now shown us the importance of the socio-cultural,
as well as the cognitive and affective dimensions of the classroom. I
believe this has also led to richer accounts of the opportunities and
affordances (to use van Lier’s term) that are mediated by the nature of
interaction between students and teachers.Many informants appear to be struggling with Stephen Krashen’srelevance
and legacy. Patsy Lightbown says:
Thus, I would have to say, for example, that Krashen had an enormous
impact on my area of focus, even if that impact was largely in the crea-
tion of a huge straw target for researchers to joust against. And for those
academics who believe that the straw target has been toppled, it would
be important to read professional development material written for teachers.
His hypothesis that comprehensible input is essentially all that is needed for
successful acquisition remains influential.Several informants, including Tim McNamara, feel that Krashen’s claims
are not supported by adequate research. Celeste Kinginger, as referred to
earlier, sees a negative impact of Krashen’s ideas on language teaching. Still,
many informants see him as a leader and a number of them argue that some
of his ideas, in particular with respect to implicit and explicit learning, are
supported by neurolinguistic research.
10.7 Conclusion
There seems to be a majority among the informants that feels that research
has, at least for some aspects, had an impact. The claims we sometimes make
about the relevance of research for teaching may be overstated. This may
have to do with the growing gap between researchers as practitioners and
with the inherent trend to conservatism in the teaching profession. Some
informants feel that the lack of impact is to be blamed on the teacher edu-
cators who do not manage to foreground research andfindings in their
programs. But the distance many researchers have to practice from makes
such views somewhat moot. Saying how teachers should teach is easy,
managing a class of more or less motivated adolescents learning French is
not. Robert Phillipson phrases this somewhat more strongly:
One of my convictions is that while I have remained a teacher of English
throughout 50 years of professional life, combining the improvement of
my students’English while working with them on applied linguistic
topics or sociolinguistic issues of many kinds, the UK/US “experts”
generally gave up actual teaching English several decades ago. They
pontificate from a theoretical pedestal that is often detached from class-
room realities, theorizing ESL, and occasionally doing empiricist studies.The impact of AL research 131