Gauging the Scholarly Value of Connecting Research to Teaching

Abstract

The field of second language studies crosses many disciplines, each with its own history, focus, and community of researchers. Considering between research and language pedagogy, I will focus here on the fields of linguistics, second language studies or second language acquisition, and foreign language education. Grabe (2002) traces the origins of the broadest of these three disciplines, linguistics, to the first issue of Language Learning: A Journal of Applied Linguistics 1948. Offering a definition that conceives the field as much larger than language learning, VanPatten (1999) says that applied linguistics is essence any use of linguistic . . . for any domain other than the development of linguistic theory (p. 51). This definition fits the broad scope of the journal Applied Linguistics, which, according to its editorial policy, publishes research into language with relevance to realworld problems with its primary interest making connections between fields, theories, research methods, and scholarly discourses, and less interest in the ad hoc solution of particular problems (see Aims the front matter of any issue). Given the local nature of many teaching problems, as Han points out, pedagogical applications might not receive high scholarly value for this journal, a reflection of their nonnecessity for the broad nature of the field.