تسجيل الدخول

تسجيل

Researching language learning: theories, evidence, claims Epistemological assumptions and ILL research

المؤلف:  Alison Sealey & Bob Carter

المصدر:  Applied Linguistics and Language Teacher Education

الجزء والصفحة:  P90-C4

2026-09-25

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Researching language learning: theories, evidence, claims

Epistemological assumptions and ILL research

Perhaps because of the heterogeneity of the discipline, many theories and epistemological assumptions are drawn on in applied linguistic research. We will discuss some recent theoretical debates which have a bearing On this area of it (Le. instructed language learning), in the context of the realist social theory we have been developing. Since the world does not speak to us directly, nor instruct us as to which categories we are to employ in understanding it, knowledge of this world, as Layder has pointed out, 'is impossible without the use of conceptual instruments, which, more often than not, derive from, or are connected with, wider theoretical parameters or discourses' (Layder 1985: 255). This entails both a rejection of naIve, or direct, realism- whereby the world is apprehended in a straight-forwardly transparent manner- and, accordingly, a recognition of the role of theory in both the determination of social ontologies and the apprehension of the empirical world.