This book discusses the relevance of applied linguistics to foreign language teaching and supports the point of view that linguistics is relevant as the source of assumptions rather than as the source of conclusions. In foreign language teaching, the assumptions based on linguistics must ultimately be evaluated on their ability to explain the facts of language teaching and to lead to improvement of instruction. The book considers several theoretical positions within linguistics and the general aims, methods, and implications involved in each. Structural descriptive linguistics, transformational generative grammar, and contrastive analysis are all discussed along with a chapter on foreign language testing. A bibliography is included. (VM)