Universidad de Santiago de Chile Facultad de Humanidades Departamento de Lingüística y Literatura Lingüística Aplicada.

 Professionals whose work involves language in some way or another often face problems with no immediate solutions.  Applied linguists try to offer solutions to ‘real-world problems in which language is a central issue’.  ‘doing applied linguistics' should not be only the responsibility of the academic community.

 A speech therapist sets out to investigate why a four-year- old child has failed to develop normal linguistics skills for a child of that age.

 An advertising copy writer searches for what would be the most effective use of language to target a particular social group in order to sell a product.

 Applied linguistics is essentially a problem-driven discipline, rather than a theory-driven one.  But the community of applied linguists has characterized itself by having a theoretical orientation.  There is a debate to determine which is more important, theory or practice.

 Theorists want to generalize the theories proposed by Linguistics as rules for the practice.  This generates a controversy due to by accomplishing such a thing would mean an obstacle to find answers to specific issues.

 Seeking a unifying and homogenous set of theoretical constructs for Applied Linguistics is a misleading and unproductive line to pursue.  While theories may be useful as a base knowledge for the practice, they not always work in all contexts.  Theories and methodologies in Applied Linguistics are not set on stone.

 They are always undergoing changes due to their discussion between peers of the Applied Linguistics’ community.  Encountering problems and adopting a convincing stance towards them is what defines applied linguistics as a discipline.

 When any professional attempts to solve a language related problem through the means of Applied Linguistics he or she will question the usefulness of its theories or methods to the situation.  Questions such as:

 Can linguistics offer an approach or a solution to the problem at hand? If so, which branch(es) of linguistic study, and by what method(s)?  How reliable is the information offered by linguists? How fitting or useful are their theories and models of the language? How willing and ready are linguists to contribute to this kind of practical undertaking?

 This is a deeper analysis and more extensive activity than in just approaching the problem there is.  Depending on the problem identified many questions would arise to find the correct answer, and in turn more specific questions derived from previous ones in order to determine the most effective course of action to solve the issue.

 What type of problem is this? Is it:  (a) a grammar problem concerning a particularly tricky English grammatical choice?  (b) a problem encountered only by speakers of a particular language or group of languages, or one encountered by most learners?  (c) a problem from that fuzzy area of ‘style’, to which there is unlikely to be a clear, satisfactory answer and which one may therefore just as well forget?

 The pathways into ‘doing applied linguistics' lead us into complex fields and a multitude of potential resources, and the success of the applied enterprise depends on:  1 Identifying and defining problems.  2 Contextualizing those problems within linguistic study and developing a theoretical stance.  3 Harnessing appropriate resources for the exploration of possible solutions.  4 Evaluating the proposed solutions.

 Any person(or professional) who wants to solve a problem by means of this field should be able to an applied linguist and only the academics of the area.  Applied Linguistics has a multi-faceted nature.  Behind models lie theories – the mental explorations, speculation and argumentation that go to build a set of ideas, beliefs or principles about language.

 Linguists are in some sense inevitably involved in all three of these activities.