An assortment of approaches to accounting for the phenomena of SLA called broadly 'sociolinguistic approaches' because they take their inspiration from work in socio-linguistics of the 1960s and 1970s, view variability itself to be at the core of what L2 speakers know about the L2, rather than an epiphenomenon induced by interference at the level of performance. That is, they view competence as variable and not homogeneous. As put by Towell and Hawkins (1994), any attempt to evaluate socio linguistic approaches to SLA must consider how these approaches deal with the five observations about SLA: transfer, staged development, systematicity, variability and incompleteness. First, transfer seems to be rarely considered in these approaches. For example, neither 'transfer' nor 'interference' even figures in the indexes of two representative texts like Tarone (1988) or Ellis (1992).
Hi Parviz,
As we may infer, the communicative approach is usually regarded as the one which complies with today's demands, though I wonder whether we actually interpret it , internalize the principles and put them into real practice. There is plenty of literature, but I'd suggest Richards and Rogers' Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching.
Hope it helps,
Laura
http://books.google.es/books/about/Approaches_and_Methods_in_Language_Teach.html?hl=es&id=9mQ9l3K73BoC&redir_esc=y
I argue for a 'socio-cultural language learning' approach that views language both as a means of interaction/learning, and as a target. According to Vygotsky, language as a tool is gradually integrated and digested into the human mind, and becomes part of its learning. I think this socio-cultural approach is compatible with socio-linguistic appraoches, or perhaps, a variety of them. Best wishes
I have addressed this relationship between Sociolinguistics and Second Langiage Acquisition in a number of papers, including "Second-language acquisition theory and indigenized varieties of English," "Toward a Grammar of South Asian English: Syntactic Markers of Lectal Range in an Indigenized Variety," "Bridging the paradigm gap: Second language acquisition theory and indigenized varieties of English (with Kamal K. Sridhar)," "A Reality Check for SLA Theories", "The Empire Speaks Back", "At home with English: Assimilation and adaptation of Asian Indians in the United States. (with Kamal K. Sridhar)", "What are applied linguistics?", and ""Languages without borders: Models of multilingualism in Cognitive Science and Sociolinguistics" Kachru Distinguished Lecture in the Linguistic sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign", available on Research Gate and/or Academia.edu. They may be of use in your research on this topic. Best,
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