Text 9A2-I
The words “theory” and “theoretical” evoke a variety of
responses in language teaching and research circles, many of
them, for different reasons, negative. For some, the negative
response they feel is due to their having sat through conference
presentations or read journal articles labelled “theoretical” which
have consisted of a good deal of rhetoric, however eloquent, and
very little substance. “Theoretical” here is mis-used, and just
means “data-free”. For others, the particular theories that have
received most “air-time” in the second language acquisition (SLA)
literature until now have been uninteresting, wrong, or vacuous,
leading them to be potentially hostile to any new ones. Still,
others have no problem with theory in general (or think they
don’t), but simply feel that work in SLA has not advanced far
enough yet for theorizing to be productive.
Those who subscribe to the last view — and they include
several prominent figures in SLA — hold that because, in their
opinion, we know relatively little about SLA, any theory we
come up with at this stage is likely to be wrong. Hence, it will be
counter-productive, in that many people will waste their time
working on a theoretical red herring instead of discovering more
facts about acquisition. In our view, while superficially
reasonable, this shows that the purpose and value of theories in
(social) science are still not widely understood in our field.
Diane Larsen-Freeman and Michal H. Long.
An introduction to second language acquisition research.
New York: Longman, 1991.