Contrastive Linguistics and the Language Teacher

The pedagogical application of contrastive linguistics has been the subject of numerous controversies since the mid-sixties. Despite strong critical voices, coming particularly, although not exclusively, from America, a large number of applied linguists and language teachers in Europe and elsewhere have found applied contrastive linguistics useful in language teaching, materials development and the analysis of error

The present collection of fourteen papers and a select bibliography is intended to indicate the direction in which applied contrastive linguistics has been developing in recent years and to suggest further areas of research, leading to a better understanding of the language learning process and to the improvement of design and classroom techniques. It will be seen that these may profitably be supplemented under certain circumstances by the inclusion of the contrastive component