Page 391 - DENG504_LINGUISTICS

Unit 30: Language Teaching Analysis: Contrastive Analysis, Error Analysis

Since teaching is determined by syllabus, linguistics has great usefulness for the syllabus-designer Notes
and can help him in determining, how, why, when and whom to teach. “Applied linguistics
has to do with the devising of syllabuses and materials for carrying out the intention of
authorities, whether local or national.”
(4) Since teaching is to take place through text-books, linguistics can help the text-book writer to
prepare linguistically sound, learners’ need-based textbooks. Linguistics can also be helpful in
the selection and gradation of vocabulary structures.
(5) Theories and descriptions of language make the teacher ask : how does a language work and
function ? What is its nature ? What are its systems and sub systems ? How is the learner’s first
language a hindrance in the way of his learning a second language ? Why does a learner commit
the errors of particular kind ? What are the characteristics of human language ?
(6) Better theories and descriptions lead to the formulation of better methods and techniques of
language teaching. Good descriptions of a language imply : a definite attitude towards a
language, a definite idea of how a language works and how it is to account for the ability to
perceive the difference between one language and the other.
(7) Linguistics has offered to all those concerned with language teaching many a useful insight
and awareness. Concepts such as ‘langue’ and ‘parole’, ‘competence’ and ‘performance’ :
‘paradigm’, ‘system’, ‘abstraction’, ‘dialect’, ‘register’, ‘pidgin’, ‘creole’, ‘diaglossia’, ‘synchrony’,
‘diachrony’, and a host of others have become home words not only for the linguists but also
for the language-teachers. Language has been looked at afresh. Linguistics has tried to define
complex phenomena like ‘language’, ‘language teaching’, ‘language acquisition’, ‘language
learning’, etc. It has been able to explicate the distinction between human communication and
other systems of communication, more especially between human language and animal system
of communication. More significantly, linguistics has removed a number of misconceptions
about language and language teaching. Linguistics has further established the supremacy of
the current spoken form, the sameness and uniqueness of languages, has accepted language
change and variation as an important phenomenon, has distinguished between mother tongue-
acquisition and second/foreign language-learning, has stressed the need of examining the
existing grammars open-mindedly and formulating more adequate grammars and theories of
language, and has established that literature is only one register of language. It has made
contributions to grammar, usage, lexicography, phonetics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics,
semantics, machine translation, reading techniques, para-linguistics, etc. Albert Marchwardt
rightly says :
Despite the fact that we now have available linguistically oriented English-language
teaching materials on many levels, where ten years ago there were virtually none, I still
believe that the most important contribution that linguistics can make to the classroom
English teacher is in reshaping his view of language and of language
learning...Linguistically sound teaching materials can be expected to produce satisfactory
results only when they are used by linguistically knowledgeable and sophisticated teachers.
Linguistics has shown the possibilities, probabilities and plausibilities of how a language behaves:
it has made prediction about the phenomena of language, has unified heterogeneous facts about
the systems of language, has removed and corrected the folklorist attitude towards language,
has provided new notions, ideas, insights, and concepts about language, has provided with the
discovery, evaluation and decision procedures, has established a useful set of dichotomies
between sound and meaning, langue and parole, competence and performance, synchrony and
diachrony, the articulatory and the acoustic, the individual and the society, the material and
the immaterial, the sameness and the difference, etc.
The concern of linguistics as well as of language teaching is grammar, vocabulary and
pronunciation. Hence both are concerned with different objectives with same material, and
have a give-and-take relationship. Linguistics has provided a number of grammars out of which
a better pedagogical grammar can be built up. With the help of the phonetic alphabet and other
facts related to phonetics, the learning and teaching of pronunciation has been greatly facilitated.

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