ABSTRACT
The situation for the subject of applied linguistics in the early years of the new millennium is interesting. There are many influences at work, at times competing traditions of research and scholarship, and there are many large issues which remain to be resolved, both in the content of the subject and the way the subject construes itself. Individual contributions, by way of research and development, theory and teaching, chip away at these issues, and the results raise new perspectives and new research questions, suggesting new groupings and loyalties among the people working in the subject. This chapter presents some closing thoughts on the concepts discussed in the previous chapters of this book. There have been some attempts, and these will become a major area of research in classroom based investigations, to elucidate the roles of and the interaction between the maturational component of second language acquisition and the instructional component.
