I invited him to come and express his views at an informal meeting. There was general agreement around the room. I was astounded. These are extreme positions and, thankfully, one does not meet many teachers who hold such views where I now work in Thailand. Nevertheless, a perceivable gap exists between theory and practice in language teaching which is not so prominent in other professions.
Teachers prefer to rely on 'practical experience' as the impetus behind pedagogic convictions.
Applied linguists and their hypotheses are regarded as overtheoretical cat's cradles. Before we try to answer this question, let us consider the social setting in which applied linguists find themselves and compare this with the classroom teacher's situation. Twenty years ago, linguistics was a very conservative, even pedestrian activity. Analysts rarely looked beyond the sentence as a unit of language. At the same time, the increasing demand for language teaching required mentors who could provide an academic umbrella for second language pedagogy and supply teachers with subject-specific knowledge.