Firth, A. & Wagner, J.(1997). On discourse, communication, and some fundamental concepts in SLA research.

This journal is a little beyond my understanding. It is difficult for me to catch some important ideas. Even though my understanding is not correct, I will try to write a response related to my teaching experience.
The first thing which attracts my interest is "theory culling". I have heard many theories about English teaching from my professors and textbooks, however, I don't have any core value in my teaching. Whenever, I hear a new theory, I am swayed without any goals. In this journal, "theory culling" can be used differently, but I need to do "theory culling" for my teaching. In my opinion, it is important to select some advantages and disadvantages of theories fitting for my teaching value critically.
Secondly, I like the notion "Integrated and balance". I tend to go to the extreme. For example, if someone says, "This theory or method is wonderful!" I discard the theory or method I applied and follow new ones without considering my teaching goals and situations. Mostly the new one is the opposite of the old one. Also because of the lack of knowledge of the new theory and method, I usually misunderstood and applied them in a wrong way. All the things need to be integrated and balanced, for instance, cognitive and social dimension of Second Language Acquision. I will have more opportunities to understand students' language problems more deeply and correctly. In addition to that, students will enjoy some benefits from the integrated and balanced approach.
Thirdly, according to Varonis & Gass, native speakers and nonnative speakers are mutiply handicapped in conversation with one another. This made me a little bit of excited and encouraged. As a nonnative speaker, I have any confidence in my English. Moreover, whenever I taught my students, I told that native speakers English is superior to ours. However, we are all handicaped in conversation. Therefore I don't have make my students frustrated all the time. Our nonnative speakers' English is also systematic and valuable. I emphasized that native speakers' English is perfect in my classes and just asked students to imitate their English. How foolish I am! I didn't explain why their English is perfect. To be honest, I didn't know the reason. Without considering the contexts English can be used, I just asked my students to follow native speakers' English. I just taught English as a tool, but I didn't teach how use it appropriately.
Lastly, when I taught students, I focused on only their mistakes, I mean, only negative things. However, from this journal, I need to focus on students' communicative success as well as their problems. By examining their communicative success, I will observe students' language progress.
I don't know how well I understood this journal, but it made me think about my teaching experience and value once again.