ABSTRACT
Language is such a fundamental and important part of human behaviour, particularly in an advanced literate society that the nature and structure of language is worth studying in its own right and the science of linguistics, or General Linguistics. In some ways modern methods of language teaching have moved away from the notion of using descriptive grammar. The emphasis on the spoken language in language teaching has brought with it an increasing emphasis on teaching pronunciation, and developments in phonetics and phonology have some relevance here. Learning to use a language involves more than one type of skill and different areas of the linguistic sciences may provide relevant background knowledge for the different skills involved. Linguistics is concerned with the analysis of language and since language is the focus of attention in cases of speech pathology it would seem self-evident that linguistics is relevant here.
