Tóm tắt

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 errors. 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 com- ponent. Most of the papers here have appeared in various places since 1975. One (Sajavaara, 1980) was presented only in December 1980; one paper (Jackson) and the bibliography have been written specifically for this volume. Since even the earlier papers were printed in period- icals and serial publications of limited distribution, thereby reducing their accessibility to a wider audiee, it was suggested by many colleagues that they should be made available to both teachers of English and students of TEFL/TESOL and contrastive linguistics (courses of which have now become permanent components of sylla- buses of many American and European universities) by being col- lected in one volume. Presenting this volume to the interested reader. it is hoped that it will serve as a useful supplement to existing collec- tions of essays on contrastive linguistics (Nickel, 1971, 1972: Fisiak. 1980) none of which, incidentally, was devoted solely to pedagogical applications of contrastive linguistics.