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Linguistics

Notes itself and how to teach it, so this, in turn, helps educators tackle with English language education
problems such as the teaching of vocabulary, reading and writing.
Teacher's role is very important in this respect. As well as being a good source of knowledge for the
learners, s/he should also act like a psychologist so as to determine proper applications in accordance
with learners' mood, perceptions, backgrounds, etc. Namely, s/he should be a professional need
analyst.
According to EL, ELT practitioners are required to create an autonomous, interactive and meaningful
language learning environment for the learners while making necessary decisions in accordance
with the school and the state policies because classroom applications are thought together with its
hierarchical structure in EL. Similarly, learners are regarded as the center of all classroom practices
and thus educational objectives of the school and the state.
All materials are presented in a meaningful way which enables learners to see the whole picture first
and then getting the necessary knowledge through this holistic structure, not in isolation. Similarly,
that is why educational linguists reject segmental phonology, but creat educational phonology to be
used in language education.
15.12 Educational Linguistics and Language Teacher Education

The recent recommendation by Fillmore and Snow that all teachers need to know quite a bit about
language has revived old debates about the role of linguistics in educating teacher trainees.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the predominant assumption was that teachers were born and
not made, or if they were made, they were "self-made." Therefore little attention was paid to the idea
of foreign language teacher education. By the 1920s, however, articles began to appear that outlined
curricula for the training of high school language teachers. One of the problems confronting teacher
education programs in the early years of the century was lack of speaking ability on the part of
candidates for certification. Teacher exams were proposed over the years to ensure a reasonable level
of proficiency. They were required to pursue general methods and testing courses as well as courses
in the psychology of learning. As a consequence, teachers were no longer producers, but were
consumers of knowledge related to language learning and teaching.
By the 1960s, teachers were expected to demonstrate both subject matter and professional competence.
They were required to take courses that focused on the language itself. When linguistics courses
were taught, for example, linguists in general had serious problems making linguistics relevant to
teaching. Especially interesting is that in a 1964 special issue of the Modern Language Journal, a set
of "guidelines" for teacher preparation was published. Despite the field's best efforts, one problem
continued to nag the profession -the low level of language proficiency among future teachers. This
was due to the fact that although teachers were knowledgeable about language itself, they were not
taught how to present that knowledge in communicative ways.
This great lack in language teacher education became booming in mid 1970s and drew special attention
of educational linguists. Then they have proposed that language teachers are not -and should not be-
pure linguists, thus they should learn linguistics as it is required by language education. Furthermore,
EL also emphasizes that as well as language learners, teacher trainees also should be educated in a
holistic and humanistic way which will enable them to teach foreign languages in the same manner,
and all practices in teacher education process should aim at revealing trainees full potential in
communicative competence.
Educational Linguistics’ Contributions to FLL/FLT

While educational linguistics contributes distinctive disciplinary focus, concepts, methods and history,
it also takes distinctive form in each of the following types of curriculum and comes up with novel
perspectives in curriculum planning.
• Skills: An economistic-vocationally oriented curriculum: In this kind of curricula, teaching
aims to facilitate the acquisition of skills which are seen to be discrete or separately specific,

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