The spread of English described in the last chapter, and the related expansion of its use andlearning, have generated intense interest in how and whether it is possible to improve the resultsof English teaching, and consequently in the study of language pedagogy and of
Second-Language Acquisition (SLA).
Historically, the most active of applied linguistic enquiry has beenin these areas. Indeed, in the early days of the discipline, applied linguistics and the study of
Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL)
were considered to be one and the same.The insights from this area of study, however, have a far wider relevance than might at firstappear. Investigating language learning inevitably entails, in a particularly focused way, debateabout what knowing and using a language actually means. At the same time it
promotesunderstanding of the relationship between individual experience, social change, and abstracttheories, which lies at the heart of all applied linguistic study. Consequently, ideas initiallydeveloped in relation to TEFL can inform approaches to a far wider range of applied linguisticconcerns than they did in the past. However, before we develop this theme, we need first to look back at the development of TEFL
,
over the last hundred or so
years.