Most researchers in second language acquisition have at one time or

another been language teachers, and many still are. As a result, we are
acutely aware of the frustrations and complicated pedagogical considerations
which daily face the language teacher in the classroom. The teacher has a
myriad of questions which s/he would like research to answer:
—Should the teacher focus on points of grammar or on communication?
—What sorts of learner errors can be predicted? Should the teacherattempt to keep the learners from
making errors? How should the
teacher deal with errors once they are made?
—Can a teacher prevent errors from fossilizing2 in a learner’s interlanguage
(IL)?3 How?
—Why do some learners have greater difficulty than others in learning
an L2?
—Is there an optimal sequence for the presentation of linguistic structures
in the classroom?
—To what extent do variables such as the age of the learner and the
social or language background of the learner affect language learning?
How can the teacher adapt curriculum materials in accordance with
the different needs of the students?

Teachers and researchers who wish to implement research results must examine current
studies critically and be aware of the following limitations which exist within
second language acquisition research at this time:
(1) The linguistic scope of the research undertaken to date has been
quite limited;
(2) research is just beginning to investigate the cognitive processes andlearning strategies which underlie
successful second language acquisition;
(3) current research has not yet systematically evaluated the influence
on second language acquisition of several important individual variables.
(4) the environmental variable of the relationship between learner speech
in research situations and learner speech in classroom interactions
has not been investigated;
(5) the methodology used in the collection of second language data is
still in a developmental state;
(6) the methodology used in the analysis of second language data is also
still being formulated; and
(7) few second language acquisition studies have been replicated by
other researchers.

The linguistic scope of the research undertaken to date has been

quite limited. As Schumann (1975) points out, most current research is
“product-level”—that is, it is concerned with the description of the linguistic
structure of what has been produced by the learner.