Language and Language Teaching, Issue 2 - Azim Premji Foundation

ConclusionAgain, sometimes papers have to be long. Butoften they don’t, and the problem usually lieswith the long introductions and conclusions thatgo far beyond the needs of the paper.Language education has clearly taken itstradition from the humanities, which favorsdissertation-style prose, rather than the sciences,where papers are usually much shorter.It is probably no coincidence that citation ratesin science are much higher: Hamilton (1991)reported that about 91% of papers published inatomic, molecular and chemical physics, and86% in virology, had been cited at least once. Inlanguage and linguistics, only 20% had been citedand in American literature, less than 1%.ReferencesWatson, J. & Crick, F. (1953). A structure fordeoxyribose nucleic acid, Nature 171, 737-738.Hamilton, D. (1991). Research papers: Who’s unitednow? Science 251: 25.Langer, J. & Applebee, A. (1987). How writing shapesthinking. Urbana, IL: National Council ofTeachers of English.Stephen D. Krashen is Professor Emeritus at theUniversity of Southern California; he moved fromthe linguistics department to the School of Educationin 1994. He is a linguist, educational researcher, andactivist. He has been perhaps the most influentialvoice in second language acquisition in recent times.We publish this paper to show to our readers howso much can be achieved through well-written shortpapers.skrashen@yahoo.comLanguage and Language Teaching Volume 1 Number 2 July 2012 39