Understanding the linkage gap between L2 education researchers and teachers

This paper reports on the results of a study that analyzed second language practitioners' and researchers' on-line interactions about six published articles written by the researcher participants. The project used Lavis et al.'s (2003) knowledge transfer framework and Graham et al. (2006) knowledge to action framework as foundations to create a shared space (an online forum) to facilitate dialogue and bring the two groups together, with the intent to enhance research access and utilization. We use text-linguistic analysis procedures to analyze the linguistic and ideational choices evident through the texts produced by the two groups online to understand how they shaped the direction and content of the interaction. The results reveal differences in the word choice and foci of the two groups and highlight the usefulness and limitations of the online forum. Discussion of the relevance of different aspects of the knowledge transfer frameworks used might enlighten future efforts to bridge the linkage gap.