A critical synopsis of Applied Linguistics : A Twentieth-century Discipline in not more than 500 words...

Written By ; Abrar S S Althabet 21/2/2012 William Grabe focuses in his article Applied Linguistics : A Twentieth-century Discipline on the growth of the field of linguistics by clarifying the real step of this science, which has been appeared at around the year 1948 with the publication of the first issue The Journal Language Learning . when the term Applied Linguistic appears or take a place in real world, scientists start trying to built a rational concept or, actually, definition for it. These definitions based on the application of linguistics to language teaching and related practical language issue, which is in somehow, made it involved in the matters of language assessment., language policies, and new field of second language acquisition (SLA), focusing on learning rather than on teaching. However, as long as linguistics has been grown up in an educational environment we should take on consideration, both, the process of teaching and learning. The author mentioned that the notion that applied linguistics is driven first by real-world language problems rather than by theoretical explorations of internalized language knowledge and (L1) language development is largely what set the field apart from both formal linguistic and later from sociolinguistic, with its own emphasis on language description of social variation in language use (typically minus the application to language problems). For more clarification, the idea of dealing with language as an existing material in real-world is the core of the study of linguistic. Of course, because language is central to all communication, and because many language issues in real-world are practically complex and long-standing, and that what should linguists keep in mind. The evolution of the definitions of linguistic and for its entity through the centuries emphasises the idea of language is a part of our life, although it has been considered as a kind of science, its appearance on our daily life and the importance of building its overall definition shows its value through the fields of science. Actually, applied linguist who work with language in real-world, who is most likely to have a realistic picture of what language is, and not the theoretical linguist who will most advance humankind's understanding of language. And that's exactly what makes scientist try hard to link the knowledge of linguistic to society.This great relationship will built a strong concept of scientific communication, and I mean by the scientific communication here the kind of communication that based on the principles of linguistic. After that, scientist tried to note various development on the field of linguistics by presenting many trends for it. First, researches in language teaching, language learning focus on the form weather it's dialogue or teacher-student interaction, they have shifted in recent years toward a focus on information processing. Language in general has two parallels structurally and informationally. Therefore, focusing on one side and,partly, ignoring the other one may be misinterpreting the real purpose of teaching language in the classrooms. Secondly, the emphasis that hold in discussions the role for critical studies; this term covered critical awareness, discourse, pedagogy, rights....etc, however, rising the ability of criticizing any written material helps in highlighting the weakness and solving language problems.And many other emphasises such as language academic uses, descriptive (usually discourses), multilingualism/bilingual, discussion in language testing and assessment, resources and perspectives provided by neuroliguistics and brian studies associated with language learning and language use.These emphasises will probably become an important sub-area of applied linguistic within the decade.

At the third section the author presented on his article was under the title The problem-based of Applied Linguistics: it's the problem not the discipline. The interest in providing the field of linguistic into many disciplines or subfields, in my opinion, don't make us lose the focus of resolving language-based-problems that people encountered in real-world. Applied linguistics may face problems such as; language contact, pathology, policy, teaching/learning problems. However, these problems, which is related to real-world, have nothing to do with the scientific/theoretic side in sub-fielding the field of linguistic. Despite the idea of dividing the applied linguistic into many trends, linguists tried hard to give an ideal definition of it. Accepting the messiness of a newer discipline and the controversies that are inevitable in describing an intellectual territory, applied linguistics, nonetheless, exhibits many defining disciplinary characteristics. There are many points which have been set in order to show the most things applied linguistics agree on such as; applied linguistics has many of marking of an academic disciplines, establishing conferences, injecting it in real-world, defining itself broadly ..etc. These points that William Grabe mentioned in his article give a clear idea about the scope of this field and it's role a standers for any gambler to go through it wisely.