Question:

Submitted by Kawthar A. Nahi, M.A. student at University of Basra, Iraq

What is the role of Neuro-Linguistic Programming in Language teaching?

Dr. Richards responds:

There is no research evidence to support the claims of NLP, which is a blend of new age pop psychology and 70s psychobabble. There are extensive critiques of it on the internet, which I need not repeat here. It is certainly not worth wasting time on for a master’s thesis, and despite its possible appeal to the untrained, NLP is not supported by SLA or any other field of related research in applied linguistics.