Linguistics is the science of languages, and the major concern of all the Linguists is largely related to the finding
and describing the characteristics of a particular language(s). Applied linguistics takes the result of those findings
and ‘applies’ them to other areas. The term ‘applied linguistics’ is often used to refer to the use of linguistic
research in language teaching only, but results of linguistic research are used in many other areas especially
English language teaching (ELT) in general and English as a foreign language(EFL) in particular.
Linguistic analysis is a sub-discipline of applied linguistics used by many researchers, pedagogues and
educationalists by diagnosing learning difficulties and solving such problems including looking for a compatible
strategy.
The importance of applied linguistics in general and English language teaching in particular is perceived by almost all pedagogues and educationists. Gone are days when a postgraduate or a graduate used to join teaching profession due the fact that he possessed good knowledge in English literature or even language. In the modern educational setting, the English teacher is supposed to know linguistics or applied English linguistics in order to prove himself as an effective English language teacher. In most pedagogic situations in Saudi Arabia, the teacher of English is bound to make error/contrastive analysis between LI (Arabic) and L2 (English) so that he can evolve a compatible strategy for each sub-aspect of the language: sound, grammar, spelling, meaning etc. The present paper is a modest attempt towards exploring the use of applied linguistics in the whole process of teaching/learning of the target language (English).