1. What does this article suggest?

This article tries to explain that it is really important for applied

linguistics to take into consideration the social context where
language teachers and students are immersed, since it is
unreasonable to teach a language from a linguistic perspective
only, ignoring the circumstances that teachers have to face and
the experiences they live in their classrooms. In a certain way, the
author invites applied linguists to be more tolerant and attentive
to the teachers and learners’ reality which is way different from
theirs.

2. What ideas would you highlight?

I find very interesting the way the author makes a contrast

between applied linguistics and teachers’ contexts to explain the
distance that exist between them.

In one hand, he states that applied linguists are in a privilege

position where they are dedicated to analyze and research about
language teaching mainly from a scientific perspective, leaving
aside important social facts such as students are unique
individuals with their own cognitive style, the pressure and little
support that teachers have in their work place preventing them for
expressing and innovating new ideas to the language teaching
field, since they have to follow strict methods and manuals, and so
many other reasons.

On the other hand, the author states that there are moments
where teachers have to face some challenges in their classrooms
and that’s when applied linguistics can help guide their teaching
process, but they need to break that distance and work
cooperatively.

3. What is your opinion about it?

I consider that this article mentions relevant aspects about

teachers and students’ realities in the classroom and how applied
linguistics have to be aware of them in order to contribute to
improve and make successful the language teaching and learning
processes.
4. Have you find difficult this content?

It was easy for me to understand the author’s main idea from the
very beginning. However, I had to read some paragraphs more
than twice since there was certain vocabulary that I did not know,
but in general this article was very interesting to read, especially
the way the author criticizes the apathy that applied linguistics
reflect towards the teachers’ social context.