The Significance of Teaching Linguistic Theory inside the Foreign Language Classroom

Abstract

Linguistic theories have always had some influence on foreign language teaching to varying degrees as they often aid construct the theoretical foundations for language teaching practices. As such, understanding these theories and the significance of their application in language teaching is of paramount importance for language teachers who may lack about their relevance. Many consider language teaching as an area of theoretical linguistics albeit, as it is argued, ‘applied linguistics’ should be remodeled as an interdisciplinary channel through which linguists and teachers can address matters of mutual interest. This paper, first, discusses how various types of linguistic theory - structural, generative, and functional linguistics - have affected foreign language teaching; then, it addresses the prevalence to examine the place of theoretical linguistics not only in foreign language classrooms, but in curricula as well. It also tackles the chief contribution of linguistic theory to language teaching through evaluating its appropriateness for pedagogy in order to convey meaningful and accurate insights about the target language to students. Finally, this paper presents an innovative teaching approach that analyzes language in a scientific systematic manner while focusing on those features of language that are of direct relevance to future language teachers.