it seems to me that the term 'sla' has basically come to mean a fairly narrow approach to doing research on learning an l such as the experiments reported by ellis that is a shame because this sort of experimentation is so fruitless but its an undertaking that a number of university based academics gets paid to pursue so it has taken on an undeserved legitimacy it's now quite distinct from 'applied linguistics' al since so little of linguistics informs the concepts and interpretations of current sla research