The Application of Linguistics in the Teaching of Spanish

I would like to clarify a point concerning the title and its ramifications.* As late as March 22, 1956, Mortimer Graves, Executive Director of the American Council of Learned Societies, announcing a new Ford Foundation grant, said the following (PMLA, Vol. 71, No. 4, part 1, Sept. 1956, p. xvii): Modern Linguistic science is very highly developed in the U. S. Its application to the practical learning of FLs was first demonstrated in the Council's famous joint program with the U. S. Armed Forces during World War II which devised the so-called 'Army method' of teaching. This whole process has been very interesting. It begins from the fact that in the study of American Indian languages a generation ago American scholars had to discover new ways of describing language phenomena which do not fit into the patterns of English, French, German, and the other West European languages. With the application of these same methods to the wartime program and to the Asian languages now, we have another example of scientific approach, which, like the study of the inside of the atom, starts as the diversion of a few curious specialists and ends as an immensely practical discovery. From this, one could gather that the same techniques of linguistic analysis for unwritten languages are being applied in teaching the better known modern languages. This is an erroneous impression fostered not only by some new linguists who have had little or nothing to do with language teaching but also by a large number of language teachers. This erroneous assumption, I believe, is the main cause for dissension between language teachers and linguists. Until recently the linguist would make pronouncements to the effect that his techniques would aid language teaching and the language teacher refused to listen, or the language teacher sought an answer but the linguist could not give it. Therefore, let us ask: What is it that the linguist can offer to benefit our instruction? I would say without hesitation that it is the results of linguistic analysis that we can profit from and not techniques of linguistic analysis. Herein lies the application of linguistics to modern language teaching. I must admit, nevertheless, that the techniques of contrast and substitution which are of

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