on adults or adolescents who are well off. There is research on minorities
and heritage speakers, but that focuses more on language policy issues than
the process of learning. Also, the attention to K-12 has traditionally been
limited in the North American AL community, while in Canada there is
substantial research by Fred Genesee, Merrill Swain and others on various
forms of immersion.
In some cases international developments impacted on people’s involve-
ment with language teaching and AL. Zoltán Dörnyei mentioned that the fall
of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the need for English language teaching that
emerged as an indirect result of that, defined his career:“Thanks to this
fortunate coincidence of language globalization and favorable market condi-
tions, even undergraduate English majors such as myself were offered lucrative
teaching contracts that few of us could resist.”
Another route to AL was through research. Rebecca Oxford worked as a
consultant when she was asked to do research on language learning strate-
gies. Paul Angelis became involved through his work as a Canadian repre-
sentative to AILA and presenting at the AILA Congress in Copenhagen in
- He then went on to contribute to the foundation of AAAL. Similarly,
Hannele Dufva got interested in AL through research on L2 phonetics and
the establishment of the Finnish Association of Applied Linguistics
(AFinLA).
Though their perspectives on testing may have changed over time Lyle
Bachman and Tim McNamara both became testers by being thrown in at the
deep end, with no real preparation. Lyle Bachman recalls:
What I was expected to do was develop and administer a placement test
for the intensive English program at the national language center in
Bangkok. I knew nothing about this. There were two references in the
library: Robert Lado’sseminalLanguage Testing(1961), and John Carroll’s
Fundamental Considerations in Testing for English Language Proficiency of
Foreign Students(1961).Tim McNamara had two weeks to read himself into testing, listening to
lectures he got from other students on his Walkman while cooking dinner.
For most people becoming an AL was a gradual process, but there are
examples of a more sudden change. Margaret Thomas remembers vividly
when she decided to move from theoretical linguistics to the history of AL:
It was at AAAL 1991 in NYC, and I was attending a presentation by a
well known researcher who gave a very studious overview of the
research on the accessibility of UG after puberty. I had justfinished my
dissertation and knew this stuffin and out. The room was in some high
building with a low ceiling. The room was full and claustrophobic, it was
too warm, I was ten weeks pregnant and very nauseous. Jackie Schachter
sat down in the row directly in front of me. She draped a beautiful20 The informants