Applied Linguistics

Applied linguistics is an interdisciplinary field that draws on linguistic theory, research, and methodology to address real-world language problems. Its scope includes language teaching and learning, translation, language policy and planning, literacy, speech-language pathology, and language technology.

The field is distinct from theoretical linguistics in its orientation: where theoretical linguistics seeks to describe and explain language as a system, applied linguistics uses those descriptions to solve practical problems. Key sub-areas relevant to ELT include SLA, Discourse Analysis, language assessment, corpus linguistics, and Sociolinguistics.