This paper discusses ways in which the findings of phonetic research, especially in the area of articulatory phonetics, can be applied to language teaching. Phonetic descriptions of a relatively sophisticated sort are seen to be useful in language pedagogy in several ways: (1) by providing the student with a knowledge of what he's trying to do (Research in psychoacoustics has led to the conclusion that a student must have some idea of how a particular phonetic distinction is produced before he can come to hear it.); (2) by indicating how one sound is related to others and how motor habits used in producing one sound can be used in producing others; (3) by providing a means of pinpointing students' errors. Phonetic descriptions have the additional advantage of being objective and language-neutral in character. Phonetic training is seen as useful chiefly at the beginning of a language course and especially in dealing with exotic languages. Three main areas in which it can help are discussed: (1) in teaching students a wholly new sort of sound; (2) in teaching students to control distinctions which they are used to treating as automatic in their own language; (3) in helping students to make more or less familiar sound-types in new ways. (FWB)