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Unit 15: Branches in Linguistics: Educational Linguistics

of applied linguistics and of his belief in the close relationship among research, theory, policy, and Notes
practice. He asserted that it should be a problem-oriented discipline, focusing on the needs of practice
and drawing from available theories and principles of relevant fields including many subfields of
linguistics (Hornberger, 2001). Pica also supports this idea and sees it as a problem- and practice-
based field "whose research questions, theoretical structures, and contributions of service are focused
on issues and concerns in education".
With the responsibility it has taken for L1 and L2 learning, EL has become particularly influential on
the scholars engaged in Foreign Language Education (FLE), who attempt to understand how teachers
teach and how students learn languages in schools, and especially how they acquire foreign literacy
skills, that is, the ability not only to comprehend and interpret but also to create written texts in the
foreign language. FLE has become, since the 1920s, a highly scientific field of research that draws its
insights mostly from social and educational psychology, thus educational linguistics.
In the following sections, educational linguistics will be examined in detail creating associations
with foreign language learning/teaching (FLL/FLT). In addition to the background information and
its relations to a number of approaches, theories, and methods; its principles and how they are
implemented in ELT settings will be discussed. Moreover, its relations to language teacher education
and its contributions to FLL and FLT will be put forward.

15.5 Related Approaches, Theories, and Methods

The problem-oriented nature of EL leads it to look to linguistics together with other relevant disciplines
such as theoretical linguistics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, anthropological linguistics,
neurolinguists, clinical linguistics, pragmatics, discourse analysis and educational psychology. This
transdiciplinary structure provides it to be associated with a number of approaches, theories and
methods.
15.5.1 Whole Language Approach

Rigg (1991) claims that the term "whole language" comes from educators not from linguists. It is an
approach developed by educational linguists in 1980s to teach literacy in the mother tongue, which is
one of the important issues that educational linguists are concerned. In this approach, it is emphasized
that learning goes from whole to part for the reason that the whole is not equal to the sum of the parts.
Actually, it can be traced back to Gestalt Psychology, which is a theory of mind and brain proposing
that the operational principle of the brain is holistic. Similarly, Whole Language Approach adopts the
view that learning cannot be achieved through isolated entities; that exacly corresponds to the educational
linguists' hatred for segmental phonogy and their insistance on educational phonology.
15.5.2 Humanistic Approach
Humanistic Approach originated by Carl Rogers in 1951 (Demirezen, 2008), also has close links
with EL in the sense that it focuses on the emotional side of learning and the principles such as
learner-centeredness, cooperation and unearting students' potentials, which are also basic elements
of educational psychology, and thus EL.
15.5.3 Communicative Approach

Communicative Approach is also associated with EL regarding the idea that the fundamental aim of
language instruction should be communicating in the target language. In order to achieve this, it is
not sufficient to have a comprehensive knowledge of language forms and functions; what is further
needed is exchange of meanings in real communication.
15.5.4 Discourse Theory
Discourse theory and especially discourse analysis play a significant role in Educational Linguistics.
As Stubb (1986) stresses that it is important to distinguish between language in education and
linguistics in education, referring to the need to study language "in its own terms" (1986:232), as a
discourse system, rather than treating language at the level of isolated surface features, ignoring its
abstract, underlying, sequential and hierarchic organization.

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