New insights based on corpus research have provided us with a new per-
spective on language, in which not grammar, butfixed expressions, are the
core of the curriculum. Diane Larsen-Freeman is, however, not convinced:
“How do you set up a syllabus aroundfixed expressions and corpus data?
There is no inherent order.”
Few informants refer to communicative language learning as a contribution
of research to teaching. Zoltán Dörnyei says:
Perhaps the communicative approach is an improvement, but I am not
sure. It seems to me that the various teaching infrastructures in the
world are so rigid, conservative and inherentlyflawed that it is virtually
impossible to improve them as a whole. Instead, we can provide the
small minority of motivated and dynamic teachers with ammunition.Some informants see awareness raising as a direct application of research
into teaching. Suresh Canagarajah propagates a radical reform of language
teaching, in which students are made aware of the use of multiple languages
and where they learn to“shuttle between languages and not adhere to pre-
scribed norms”. Through the discovery of that shuttling between languages
and varieties the language learning takes place.
Referring to second and foreign language education in western Europe,
Jan Hulstijn sees the development of the CEFR as having impact on educa-
tion. But, as mentioned in Chapter 6, in various papers he has voiced his
concerns about the CEFR, echoing critical views on it by others.
Along with various other informants, Margaret Thomas notices a change
of attitude toward errors:“A positive development is the growth of commu-
nicative language teaching that trusts learners to put together sentences and
notbeafraidtomakeerrors.”Rebecca Oxford sees an“on-going, global inter-
est in language learning strategies and strategy instruction, despite theoretical
contention about strategies among some researchers in the ALfield”. Research
is always secondary to politics at different levels, according to Mike Long:
In general, state and federal politicians and corporate interests over-
whelm any serious impact researchfindings could and should have, as
witness the dire situation in Arizona, the virtual disappearance of genuine
bilingual and immersion K-12 programs throughout the country, the
shrinkage in numbers of students at all levels studying foreign languages,
and the continued housing (burial?) of most university language programs
in literature departments, where foreign languages are“taught”(I use the
term loosely) by faculty, part-time lecturers and teaching assistants whose
interests lie in literature and many of whom have little knowledge about,
and less interest in, language teaching, let alone SLA or AL.The impact of research also depends on the quality of that research, says
Keith Johnson:
128 The impact of AL research