research says and, thus, what they should do. However, they are often
influenced by political or community concerns that override the more
rational view that we as researchers take. For this reason, I think we
have not always been very effective in our discussions with them.According to Bill VanPatten, the impact of AL on language education is
limited:“Language education is not controlled by AL in the US.”
Jan Hulstijn sees the development of credit systems as an important trend:
A massive impact has had, however, the Council of Europe’s enterprise
to arrive at a European Unit Credit System for Modern Language
Learning by Adults, starting with the Rüschlikon Congress in 1971,
reaching afirst peak with the publication of the Threshold Level (Van
Ek, 1975), and culminating in the publication of the Common European
Framework of Reference (CEFR) in itsfinal version in 2001.The notion that, in his view, this is an important trend does not imply
that he fully endorses the ideas behind the CEFR and its current appli-
cations. He talks about“the shaky ground beneath the CEFR”in an early
paper on this topic. As mentioned earlier, not all informants see the devel-
opment and spread of the CEFR as a positive development. Although he
sees the CEFR as a good development, David Singleton worries about its
basis in research.
7.2.7 The linguistic landscape
In the last decade many researchers have been attracted by the research on
language in spaces, in particular the linguistic landscape. The research on this
was stimulated by Ben-Rafael and Shohamy in the Israeli/West Bank context.
They showed how public signs, but also advertisements and shop windows
reflect the distribution of power through the languages that are visible. Joan
Kelly Hall thinks that“the idea of linguistic landscape is captivating; it can
be used in classrooms to ask real questions about how language is used”.
There have been several special symposia on this topic at AAAL (the
American Association of Applied Linguistics) and AILA (Association Inter-
nationale Linguistique Appliquée) conferences, and a number of books and
special issues of journals have been devoted to it, with work by Jasone
Cenoz, Nick Coupland, Durk Gorter, Bernard Spolsky, Aneta Pavlenko and
Christopher Stroud.
7.3 Educational aspects
A non-trivial aspect mentioned regularly is that there is no one-size-fits-all
method of teaching. Or, as Alister Cumming put it:“Recognition of the
complex, variable, and multi-faceted dimensions of language learning and of
Trends II 83